Rewriting Homeless Identity

Writing as Coping in an Urban Homeless Community

Jeremy S. Godfrey

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2015
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780739190364
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Rewriting Homeless Identity: Writing as Coping in an Urban Homeless Community focuses on the identities of homeless writers, with initially limited or no specialized training in writing, at a homeless community church. Through an ethnographic, two-year study, author Jeremy Godfrey hosted and participated in weekly writing workshops. He also participated in the founding of a street newspaper within that community. This book shows Godfrey's experiences in leading writing workshops and how they promoted self-exploration within this community. Students of the workshop negotiated their unique, individual writing personas during the study. Those personas were often coping with their experiences on the streets. More importantly, the writers viewed those experiences as central to their writing processes. Much like the setting of the workshop at an urban, non-denominational, community church, the writers honed their coping tactics through conversational and performance-driven writings. Rewriting Homeless Identity highlights those writing samples and the conversations with homeless authors of the samples in relation to identity and a sense of growth.

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Halftitle
• 1 Identification through Participation
• 2 Survey of U.S. Street Newspaper Discourse Analysis:Discourse Model and Measurement
• 3 Discourse Analysis of an SNP Phenomenon:The Education Approach
• 4 Public Writing and Private Context: A Writing Setting
• 5 Coping as Life Motivation
• 6 Other Examples of Coping
• Conclusion: Liminality, Recovery, and Community Literacy
• Appendix: Transcribed Interviews with Some Writers of the Workshop and Overlook
• References
• Index
• About the Author