Songs from the Alley - Hardcover

Songs from the Alley explores homelessness in 1980s Boston, when the city boasted the most enlightened and aggressive homeless policy in the United States, thanks to its mayor, Raymond Flynn, the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Mayors' Task Force on Homelessness and Hunger. Hirsch creates an indelible portrait of homelessness, focusing on two women in their 30s: Wendy, an African American woman who suffers from alcoholism, and Amanda, a white woman who struggles to keep her small apartment and thrift shop job (and to refurbish a plywood dollhouse she finds at Goodwill). Through these two women, and the people Hirsch meets at the Pine Street Inn homeless shelter, she begins to understand the difference between those who seek help from the shelters and soup kitchens and those who won't. She also learns how and why homelessness has grown to the extent that it has and discovers the shortcomings of subsidized housing and job training programs, as she watches Amanda lose her job, fading in and out of functional life. Songs from the Alley is a probing and heartfelt investigation that demonstrates how easy it is to fall through the cracks of society, and how hard it is to get back in. --Kera Bolonik

Both in their mid-thirties, Amanda and Wendy were raised in lower-middle-class suburban Boston. When the author met them in 1985, they were residents in Boston shelters. In this groundbreaking study, every cliche the reader might have held about the homeless is powerfully destroyed. These women had homes and families; they chose their state because it offered them comfort and companionship they could not find elsewhere. "Not having a home can be a positive experience," says Amanda, knowing that people from the outside probably won't understand. Applying the narrative techniques and imagery of the fiction writer to portray not only these two women but those who have attempted to care for them, Hirsch gives perhaps the best insights we will ever have on homelessness. A required purchase for all urban libraries.
- Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.