"Managing to be both journalistic and novelistic, Berg provides intimate portraits of LGBTQ youths who are left to fend for themselves. Compelling from the first page No House to Call My Home is unflinchingly candid in its portrayal of a broken system, and a broken society where abandoning youths is overlooked. Berg allows the brilliance and resilience of these young people to shine bright. The adversity they face should enrage you; their courage and grace will move you." —Richard Blanco, author of The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood
"In No House to Call My Home Berg has given us an antidote to the numbness that comes with reading the statistics on homeless queer youth in America. He's given us their stories. In harrowing, vivid detail, he shows us, through his own experience of working with them, the lives of these young people of color as they struggle through the neglect of adults, the indifference of bureaucracies, and the harsh realities of fending for themselves in a cold world. Again and again, what they are denied is dignity. Which is what this book tries in its own way to give them back, and which is what any social cause requires to initiate lasting change—the opening of empathy." —Adam Haslett, National Book Award Finalist and author of Union Atlantic
"Ryan Berg opens a window into the troubled, often ignored world of New York City's foster care system, and by extension, America. No House to Call My Home is an important work that will be a revelation for many." —Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of Brief Encounters With the Enemy and When Skateboards Will Be Free
"In No House to Call My Home Ryan Berg takes us into the New York foster care system—where he worked for two years as a residential counselor in a group home for LGBTQ youth of color—and gives us, along the way, an earnest, heartfelt, and deeply compassionate portrait of that most fundamental of human needs: to be loved unconditionally. Berg is a brave and clear-eyed writer, and this profoundly important book should be required reading for anyone wishing to be a better ally—or, for that matter, for anyone wishing to be a better human being." —Lacy M. Johnson, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and author of The Other Side
"Ryan Berg's No House to Call My Home takes readers inside the New York State foster care system, where LGBTQ youth who have been abandoned or abused are housed in order to keep them off the streets and out of harm. Residential counselors advise and advocate for these kids, helping them to negotiate institutional red tape, visits with their real families, education, employment and recovery. Berg's chronicle of the lives of the young residents at the 401 and Keap Street shows how much adversity they face and how much strength they draw from one another. These kids are smart, resourceful, brave and fierce. But they are also kids. No House to Call My Home is a call for greater understanding, support and advocacy for these children struggling to stand on their own as they 'age out' of the system and enter adulthood. Challenge and change are the daily currency for them. How are they to succeed with so many obstacles? This book offers suggestions and hope." —D. A. Powell, author of Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys and Chronic
"Ryan's Berg's No House to Call My Home is a searing, harrowing, and ultimately inspiring story of the struggles all too many transgender people experience. Berg's heroes, denied the common decency of house and home, nonetheless refuse to surrender their humanity. Sobering, moving and stirring, No House to Call My Home is a must read for anyone wishing to understand the challenges of transgender men and women—and their caregivers." —Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She's Not There and Stuck In The Middle With You
"Sometimes we don't understand the life we find ourselves in the midst of living. Sometimes our longing for home can drive us toward oblivion. Sometimes the best we can do is to create who we have to be in order to get what we need. Sometimes, by immersing ourselves in something larger than ourselves, we can discover who we are. In this moving and clear-eyed account, Ryan Berg reminds us that this moment is more precious than we think, and that sometimes the best we can do is to love each other (damn it)." —Nick Flynn, bestselling author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
"What do we owe our children? Who will keep the company of those children forgotten or lost? Ryan Berg ventures an unforgettable tribute to the youth he encountered in the New York foster care system. Zooming in on LGBT youth of color and the forgotten stories of homeless youth in America, No House to Call My Home recalls, remembers, recovers the lives and bodies and truths of the children we leave behind. Home is a story told by children who had to write the fiction of a family for themselves in order to survive. All those voices, in these pages, becoming song." —Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water: A Memoir and The Small Backs of Children: A Novel
"The plight of homeless LGBT youth seldom gets the attention it deserves. Ryan Berg's book No House To Call My Home is one man's attempt to remedy that situation…. A sobering look at the lives of a variety of LGBT kids in a version of foster care… Impossible to ignore." —New York Journal of Books
"A moving account of the many challenges and difficulties facing LGBTQ foster youth in New York City and how the system has failed them." —Shelf Awareness
"An important and revelatory read." —The Rumpus
"Just as there is a school-to-prison pipeline in this country, so too, this grim report reveals, is there a home-to-homeless paradigm for many young people. Life on the streets is tough. It is tougher still for LGBT—or, as writer, activist, and former counselor Berg would have it, LGBTQ, the last element meaning "questioning"—kids, who constitute as much as 40 percent of the population of young homeless people... Berg's portraits are arresting… His fraught encounters with individuals become universal, offering a touch of hope…Particularly important for caseworkers and social service specialists, who, by Berg's account, are likely to encounter more young people in the LGBTQ population in the near future." —Kirkus Reviews
07/01/2015
Berg debuts with a compelling group of human interest stories. Sure, the ostensible purpose here is to detail the distressing state of the foster care system for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trangender, queer (LGBTQ) youth in New York and provide case examples. But the author also shows how red tape and obdurate bureaucracies work against helping the most vulnerable. Berg's extraordinary talent is his portrayal of the human dimension. These are teenagers with the same anxieties, frustrations, interests, hopes, and desires as teenagers (and others) everywhere, but they also face bullying beyond what would break most. Many receive little or no support at home, while others face addiction and prostitution. Oddly, though much of this story is discouraging, there is a sense of hopefulness. The resilience of Raheem, Bella, Rodrigo, and others profiled is so astonishing that it is impossible not to be amazed. VERDICT Berg's accessible writing style makes this book highly recommended to general readers.—David Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia
2015-06-04
Just as there is a school-to-prison pipeline in this country, so too, this grim report reveals, is there a home-to-homeless paradigm for many young people. Life on the streets is tough. It is tougher still for LGBT—or, as writer, activist, and former counselor Berg would have it, LGBTQ, the last element meaning "questioning"—kids, who constitute as much as 40 percent of the population of young homeless people. Those numbers vary, and the author is fuzzy on them, but two things are evident: there are far too many homeless children, and, naturally, the gay children among them are stigmatized. Interestingly, Berg raises the prospect that advances on other fronts in the struggle for gay civil rights may be causing the kids to come out early, exposing themselves to the sort of familial rejection that puts them at risk of being turned out onto the streets. There aren't many surprises in the narrative; indeed, there are turns that have by now become cliché, from the disaffected, alcoholic grown-up who is himself saved by trying to save at-risk young people to the crack-addicted but heart-of-gold sex worker. Still, some of Berg's portraits are arresting: "Pimple-faced and slinky, Christina is a cocoa-colored sixteen-year-old transgender Latina from the Bronx who thinks she's a white girl from the suburbs. Her Britney Spears infatuation is all-consuming." Packed full of case studies that are unpleasant from start to finish—all group homes and ransacked lockers, beatings and diseases—Berg's narrative moves from the clinical to Barbara Ehrenreich-style journalism as it progresses. His fraught encounters with individuals become universal, offering a touch of hope even as the parental refrain continues to sound: "no faggot is going to live under this roof." Particularly important for caseworkers and social service specialists, who, by Berg's account, are likely to encounter more young people in the LGBTQ population in the near future.
