The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness: A Memoir

Number 19 on my list for my 25 in 2011 goal is The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness: A Memoir by Brianna Karp.

Overall, The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness was a quick read that helps highlight how debilitating homelessness is and that many, many people are one step away from it.

Would I recommend you read it? Not so sure. I’d rather you borrow from me or the library. And give the $11 to a homeless shelter near you.

Quick recap – Brianna finds herself homeless after losing her job and needing to escape her dysfunctional and abusive parent’s home. A blessing for her, she was able to secure a living space in her biological father’s old RV which she parks in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Brianna writes about using Starbucks’ internet service, her laptop, cell phone, and a P.O. Box to work to secure new employment. She mentions using a $10 month health club shower to stay as clean as possible so she could interview and, when she did find employment, keep a job. 

And then – She meets a man. On the Internet. He’s from Europe and lives there. And he’s quite a bit older than her. Sadly, she uses her unemployment checks to have him visit several times and pretty much supports him, including buying her own engagement ring and clothes for his unborn daughter (with, yes, another woman). She also makes a surprise visit to him – and you can see how the story is going to end – only to wait for him for two days in an outdoor train station in the deep of winter nearly freezing to death.

And this is where a lot of people have a problem with her story. Brianna is unfortunately receiving a lot of passionate hateful feedback essentially saying her book is full of lies, along the same lines as James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces.

I can’t go as far as agreeing; I don’t know what is a lie or an exaggeration. I do see that she just made a lot of really bad choices. And then decided to write about them for the entire world to “enjoy.” I don’t know if I could do that, could you?

There’s also debate if she was really homeless. She wasn’t on the street corner begging for change; she was collecting unemployment. She wasn’t sleeping under a bridge; she had shelter in an RV. She wasn’t digging through garbage cans; she was frequenting Starbucks and buying overpriced bitter coffee so she could stay all day and use the internet. I really have no judgment on this either – her situation isn’t one any of us would want to be in.

In the end, she spent too many pages of the book on the man and too few pages on the much more interesting points of living in a Wal-Mart parking lot.