Somewhere Nowhere: Lives Without Homes ed. by Gareth Morris, Sam Dahl, Philip Brown, Lisa Scullion and Peter Somerville (review)

A product of a two-year project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in which the life stories of over a hundred homeless people in the UK were collected, Somewhere Nowhere shares the personal experiences of five select participants with a general readership. As explained in the foreword, the independently published collection depicts “the events they attribute as being significant in their lives and the meanings they attach to them” (3). The ensuing vignettes, narrated entirely in the subjects’ own words, follow similar formats: each opens with a description of the subjects’ lives before they moved to temporary housing or slept on the streets, each chronicles critical turning points in their lives, and each closes by voicing hopes for the future. Despite differences in age, gender, marital status, work experience and even nationality, the participants’ stories, not surprisingly, share common elements: the narrators are often children of broken homes, have suffered physical and/or sexual abuse, and have themselves turned to substance misuse. The slender volume closes with a brief epilogue describing the protagonists’ current situations.

Significantly, these are not tales of redemption. The gritty stories, captivatingly rendered in the conversational style of each speaker, unflinchingly depict real people in difficult circumstances without excess or exaggeration. It is not the stark content of these tales, however, that remains profoundly unique about this collection. The graphic text provides a medium whereby the protagonists themselves reflect upon their individual experiences and draw their own conclusions. At the same time however, these intimate testimonies have been illustrated—or, one might contend, interpreted visually—by Sam Dahl, a freelance graphic designer and illustrator. As such, although narrated entirely in the first person, the life stories are simultaneously represented in comics format as visualized by a third party. Appropriately, given the distinct narrative positions of the testimonial subjects and the artist, Somewhere Nowhere maintains a clear separation between the orally transmitted texts and the accompanying supplemental visual images. Little or no dialogue appears in the illustrative panels; instead, verbal narration, somewhat akin to a narrative voiceover, stands apart. This physical separation between text and image assures that the oral testimonies do not become overshadowed or undervalued by the intense black and white drawings.

The front and back cover designs of Somewhere Nowhere form mirror images that feature a streetlamp’s illuminating radius of light on an otherwise black surface, perhaps suggesting that the volume aims to shed light on often-unseen or overlooked facets of homelessness. To this end, Gareth Morris (a member of the four-person research team comprised of experts in the fields of psychology, social policy, housing and social work) explains in the team’s blog that a host of complex underlying issues including economic dependence, unemployment, mental health and relationship conflicts, reveal living rough to be a symptom rather than simply a “social problem” to be solved. In fact, Morris overtly laments the very label “homeless,” arguing that by suggesting deficiency—the lack of a home—the term stigmatizes while simultaneously failing to “capture the variation of conflicts and problems that the person is experiencing” (“Losing and Finding a Home/Seeking a better understanding of homelessness” May 5, 2010). Somewhere Nowhere literally illustrates this point and, by drawing upon the diversity and complexity of individual experiences, successfully connects the reader to distressing if not altogether dehumanizing experiences.

Despite differences in scope and content, the five life stories exhibit similar structure, page layout and drawing style. Artfully succinct title pages foreshadow pivotal events and identify narrators by first name (changed to maintain anonymity) and age. Poignant epigraphs underscore lessons to be derived from each tale. The ensuing graphic narratives, approximately eight to twelve pages in length, have been edited to neatly unfold in parallel fashion—childhood (or an immigrant’s arrival in the country); worsening situations, deteriorating interpersonal relations and substance misuse; eventual homelessness; reflections upon current circumstances and in some...