Author Talk with Catherine Linka
REDEFINING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HOMELESS
“It’s so easy to judge…to assume a hundred things about people that are untrue.”
In my new novel, What I Want You to See, my main character, Sabine is determined to hold onto her image as a talented painter and deserving recipient of a prestigious scholarship to the art institute she attends. But controlling her image means hiding the truth about her situation: before she started the semester, she spent months living in her car. Like a lot of writers, my stories come out of what fascinates me. I’ve always been drawn to art, the art world, and art crime, so it was only natural that I embarked on writing a novel about an art student who becomes an unwitting pawn in a masterful crime. As I got deeper into the story, I realized that the other force shaping this story was my growing awareness of the changing face of homelessness. To craft a character so desperate to keep her scholarship she makes risky choices that put her future in danger, I stripped Sabine of her mom and their home. When the story begins, she’s renting a cozy room in a house near school and hiding her past from her new friends so she won’t be labeled as that “homeless girl.” I’d read a few articles about college students who were homeless, but as I dug into the research, I was shocked. It turns out that Sabine is like tens of thousands of actual college students who hide their homelessness or housing insecurity from the people around them. They’re among the “hidden homeless,” holding jobs, attending classes and working towards degrees while couch surfing, sleeping in cars or catching naps on a bus or in a library. Homelessness and housing insecurity, the inability to pay your rent, is the new normal in my home state of California where unaffordable housing and limited financial 34 K CURIOSITALES
aid mean that even students at prestigious institutions like UCLA can be affected. Homelessness can hit anyone, but is more common among marginalized groups such as trans youth, foster kids or racial minorities. Students experiencing homelessness rarely self-identify as homeless. Negative stereotypes about poverty, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse are so strong that most reject the label. One high-achieving student told an interviewer, “I wasn’t homeless. I lived in my car.” As I wrote Sabine’s character, I resisted making her ashamed of her experience. I feel I owe it to my characters to do what I can to make them real and multi-faceted and to not render them as stereotypes. Sabine has a strong self-image which stems from her artistic ability, and she holds on to her vision of herself, seeing her talent as her ticket out of her situation. She is, however, conscious that revealing her past will cause people to see her differently and attach a label to her that will be almost impossible to shed. The labeling Sabine is so eager to avoid affects many students experiencing homelessness in real life. One reason they hide their living situation is that school staff and fellow students often focus on their living situation as a “point of trauma.” Like most of us, they want to be seen as multi-dimensional human beings, not stereotypes. Instead of educators and peers assuming they are damaged, breakable or emotionally unstable because of what they’re dealing with, they want to be treated as normal human beings addressing their challenges. It’s not surprising that a major theme of the novel turned out to be how we see others and how we want to be seen ourselves. We all want people to see us as our best selves, but we don’t always recognize the assumptions and prejudices we bring to interactions. I think Sabine explains it well when she says, “It’s so easy to judge…to assume a
