Persona (Non) Grata: Reading the Human in the ‘Homeless’

Written and produced entirely by women, ​Doorways is the latest title from House Sparrow Press – an expansive, layered and self-reflexive anthology exploring the personal stories of one of society’s most marginalised groups – women experiencing street homelessness.

Growing out of the extreme personal experience that informed the sound and photographic works of artist Bekki Perriman’s The Doorways Project, ​Doorways ​combines personal testimonies with new essays and commentary by renowned academics, activists, journalists, therapists and practitioners, exploring the cultural, social and political dimensions of homelessness, as well as the role of artists and institutions in challenging it.

As the effects of capitalism and relentless property speculation blight and restrict the lives of millions, Doorways delivers an urgent and uncompromising dispatch on the realities of austerity, gendered violence and social cleansing in Britain today. It asks us to consider how much we really know about the trials of life for the growing number of women forced to live on our streets, in hostels or in homeless shelters, reminding us why and illustrating how their presence is not just a personal tragedy, but a social and political act of violence and injustice.

Doorways creates an expansive, deeply textured, informed space of creative resistance that has never been more necessary.

CONTENT
➢ Foreword: ​Moyra Peralta
➢ The Doorways Project: ​Bekki Perriman
➢ A Gendered Approach to Homelessness​: Bekki Perriman
➢ The Real Housing Crisis and How We Overcome It: ​Andrea Gibbons
➢ Whose City Is It Anyway?: The Cleaning Out of City Spaces​: ​Anna Minton
➢ Seen as Un-Seen: Homelessness and Visual Culture: ​Mary Paterson
➢Power and Control: How the Housing First Approach Can Redress the Balance for Women
Experiencing Homelessness: ​Lisa Raftery
➢ Street Talk: Therapy of Presence: ​Pippa Hockton
➢ Violence and Trauma: A Societal Reality We Are All Responsible For: ​Laura E. Fischer
➢ How to ​Make Art​ Listen in a Housing Crisis​: Janna Graham
➢ Two Reflections on Art and Neoliberalism: ​Shiri Shalmy and Andrea Luka Zimmerman
➢ The Aftermath of Street Homelessness​: Bekki Perriman
➢ Afterword:​ Kate Tempest