Writer donates books to help homeless
ultimate dream for this is for it to be distributed like street newspapers, given away for free to the homeless, who’ll sell it for however much they want and keep the money.”
Now it’s happening. Earlier this month, two days before he moved to New York City, Paulas delivered about 500 copies of the selfpublished novel to a pair of area street newspapers, Berkeley’s Street Spirit and San Francisco’s Street Sheet. And for the past of couple weeks, the newspapers’ vendors — people experiencing homelessness — have had the option of selling the book along with the newspapers. They can charge however much they want, and they keep all the proceeds.
“There’s something weirdly pure about these street newspapers,” Paulas says. He’d written a piece for the Poetry Foundation about the street newspapers, and their mission stuck with him. There are hundreds worldwide, reporting on issues central to homelessness and at the same time giving unhoused people a foothold, a way to make money. “They stand apart from a lot of other types of media, in terms of just their model and their goal. … It kind of has this weirdly punk thing to it.”
Alastair Boone has a small office just off Adeline Street in Berkeley. It’s a bit hidden, tucked away in the leafy backyard that belongs to Youth Spirit Artworks, Street Spirit’s publisher, but it’s full of soft light and copies of the paper. Boone has been the editor of the paper for about a year now. She’s the only one on staff, so she writes for the paper and manages the freelancers, many of whom have been homeless themselves. Paulas got her attention through Twitter.
His pitch was unusual — but not exactly unheard of. A few years ago, Street Spirit vendors sold a movie called “Dogtown Redemption,” a documentary about West Oakland recyclers. But that was a film very much about the homeless community; it made sense. Paulas’ book takes the reader to encampments, but it’s not a novel about homelessness.
Still, after reading the book, Boone thought it was a good fit — worth a try, anyhow.
“His view of Oakland is broad, and that is what you get a lot of in the book — you get a real sense that you’re grounded in Oakland and … he sees all these things as being connected to each other,” Boone says. “Writing anything about Oakland requires writing about unhoused people in Oakland, because that’s a big crisis the city is facing.”
Paulas gave Street Spirit 280 copies of his book, and 10 days into the project, Boone says she only had about 60 left. One woman who sells the paper near Boone’s office had sold 40 copies of the book. She kept coming back to the Street Spirit office, taking five at time. The suggested price is $5 to $10, but that’s just a suggestion. Be a little generous with the math and that adds up to $400 of revenue the woman wasn’t expecting this month.
Last week, not far from the Downtown Berkeley BART Station, another woman was selling “Eastern Span.” Copies of the book sat on top of copies of Street Spirit. The woman didn’t want to be interviewed. No photos either. She was working, she said. No time to chat. No time to pose. She was selling the book for $20. People were paying, too.
“I can sell anything,” she said.
“I think it’s really amazing that in ... the process of reporting, (Paulas) realized he wanted the actual, tangible book to give back to the unhoused community and to contribute positively to the lives of the unhoused community,” Boone says.
It may not all be entirely altruistic. People are reading his book that wouldn’t have read his book otherwise. But it’s also clear Paulas feels deeply about this issue. On the flip side of the book’s cover, where writers usually reserve the rights to their work, Paulas does the opposite.
“I’m purposefully not reserving ‘all’ rights. If somehow this moves you and you want to, I don’t know, print out a copy for a friend, or make your own kind of art related to it, please do so. Have at it,” he writes. “Just don’t make any money off it. Or if you do, donate it to organizations working with homeless folks, or just give the money to homeless folks themselves.”