BOOKS
WORDS: BEN KELLY
NO HOUSE TO CALL MY HOME
RYAN BERG/NATION BOOKS
By his own admission Ryan Berg was lost in his own life when he took up a job as a caseworker in a group home for disowned LGBTQ teenagers in New York City in 2004, but the problems he saw reflected back at him far outweighed his own. No House to Call My Home is both a memoir of his years in the role, and a lyrical ode to the lives of these tragic youths, who struggle to break the destructive cycles and systems into which they have been born.
As a gay white man from the Midwest, Berg’s disclaimer is that he is not attempting to “save or speak for young queer people of colour,” but rather to showcase their bravery, and shine a spotlight on how the U.S. care system fails so many of its most vulnerable youths (of the 4,000 homeless youths in New York City, almost 43% are LGBTQ). And indeed this book is theirs, rather than Berg’s. It is written as a collection of short stories, through most of which Berg is merely an observer similar to Isherwood’s Berlin Novels.