As you may know, I've been zoning in on a focus for my poverty book. I'm still in the middle of an ambitious immersion journalism project wherein I've been living in abject poverty for almost ten years. It's so authentic. I've been researching poverty academically for a year, I'm ready to go. What I want to do is give a voice to the very poor. There are a LOT of homeless people here in Eugene, and they are from all over. They are very diverse in age and background (and level of sanity.) I've been hanging out with them, just chatting, since I got here. I want their stories to be told. What if I...
What if I passed out numerous notebooks and asked people to write a few pages of their story and then pass the notebook to someone else? I just got a job doing political polling downtown right by the bus station, which is where I've been kicking it with my homeless friends, so I'm going to be around there a lot. People could just hand me their pages, or maybe I could put a collection folder at the library? The library is right there too and everyone goes in there every day. Also, I could set up an email that's really easy to remember, because some people have internet access, like our homeless Kossack brothers and sisters.
Okay, maybe I could make up an info sheet and laminate it to both covers of the notebook, and tie a string with a pen, and put the whole thing in a zip bag. I could also just pass out the info sheet if I don't have enough notebooks. Remember, I don't buy new things, but the thrift stores are full of old half-used notebooks. The info sheet could have some writing prompts like, "What's your typical day like?" and "What do you wish the American people knew about your life?"
Then I could collect them, post them here, eventually publish them, and learn a lot about our homeless brothers and sisters in the process. This is where my superpower comes into play: I read about five times faster than a normal human. People's handwriting might be a challenge, but not insurmountable. Also, I have found that sharing my story makes me more mentally healthy. Maybe it would be the same for the folks who participated in my project.
Does this seem like a workable and worthy project? Do you think I would get enough pages to work with? Is there anything unethical I'm not seeing, or am I failing to be compassionate in any way? Thanks as always for your invaluable attention, care and advice. This community keeps me strong!
