Author Seeking Room of Her Own

Being homeless or unhoused doesn’t necessarily mean sleeping in the street. Some unhoused people live in their cars, others stay with friends or relatives, and still others find space in shelters or set up camp in tree-houses or campgrounds. This morning I had coffee with Liza, who wrote the very powerful statement I posted last Friday.  She is a talented, educated, capable woman who enjoyed being strong and doing physically-demanding work. For some years she and her ex-husband had a farm, and after their divorce she worked as a cook in a restaurant for many years. As a result of cancer and the after-effects of chemotherapy, she can no longer do the heavy work she loves to do. She lost her regular income; she lost her housing; she is often in pain; and yet she says, “My situation is uncomfortable, but it’s not the worst thing that can happen. I’m not living in a slum in Rio; I’m not watching my children starve; I have enough to eat. It’s not horrible, it’s just stressful; every day I make a list of twelve things I’m grateful for, and I never run out of things to put on that list.”

She gets a small disability check each month, but it isn’t enough to cover rent at a time when rents are sky-high, so she has been unhoused for nearly three months now, and she showed me the huge sheaf of papers she is filling out, trying to find affordable housing. She has been told there is a two-year waiting list for any kind of housing. Meanwhile she is couch-surfing: staying with friends or relatives, house-sitting or animal-sitting for people on vacation. She is on a waiting list for a women’s shelter, but when she gets into it, she will only be allowed to stay for a month or so, and then she will have to give up her bed to someone else who is waiting. She has never had to sleep on the street, and she says she would die before she would risk it.

Liza is a published writer, though she’s never made any money at it. She is writing a book, despite moving from couch to couch, adapting to other people’s household schedules, etc. We talked about the economic situation in the USA, about corporate greed and corporate power, about writing and writers.

In the hour before we met for coffee, I read the speech Ursula LeGuin made when she won the National Book Award a couple of days ago.  LeGuin said, “We need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art.” As Liza and I were saying, capitalism is heartless, and we are feeling its affects; LeGuin spoke of that in the same speech: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems unescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”

I admire LeGuin’s work and her courage to say what she thinks. I had the pleasure of meeting and photographing her at a public reading she gave at Powell’s a couple of years ago.