Sacred Shelter: 13 Journeys of Homelessness and Healing

Editor Susan Celia Greenfield joins us to talk about her book, Sacred Shelter, along with Michelle Riddle and Sophia Worrell, both of whom experienced homelessness and tell their riveting, moving life stories in the book. We’ll also be joined by Marc Greenberg, Executive Director of the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing.

In a metropolis like New York, homelessness can blend into the urban landscape. In Sacred Shelter, New York is the place where a community of resilient, remarkable individuals are yearning for a voice.

Through frank, honest interviews, this book follows the lives of thirteen people who experienced homelessness and graduated from an interfaith life skills empowerment program. They share traumas from their youth, the devastation of homelessness, and the healing they discovered through community and faith. Interspersed among their stories are reflections from directors, clerics, and volunteers involved in the life skills program. In powerful narrative form, Sacred Shelter represents a demographic group that continues to endure systemic injustice and marginalization. By listening to individual stories, we are urged to confront our own woundedness and uncover our desire for human connection, a sacred shelter on the other side of suffering.

Books will be available for sale and signing.

For a Readers’ Guide to Sacred Shelter visit https://fordham.bepress.com/soc/3/

Susan Celia Greenfield, Professor of English at Fordham University, is author of Mothering Daughters: Novels and the Politics of Family Romance, and of many essays and short stories.