Songs from the Alley Book

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 Read More