Placed in an orphanage in New York City in 1948 at age three when his mother died, Casanova hardly knew his father, whom he describes as an alcoholic wife-beater. His youth, a succession of detention centers, prisons, shelters and mental hospitals, was marked by heroin addiction, alcoholism, gang membership and burglaries, and as a self-described "Puerto Rican with a black background," he endured prejudice and racial beatings. Today, as vice-president of the National Union of the Homeless, Casanova campaigns for low-income housing and greater federal and local assistance to the homeless and to squatters. Despite testing HIV-positive from sharing needles, he remains optimistic and has served as an AIDS outreach counselor and a drug counselor for juvenile offenders. In this raw, gritty autobiography written with freelancer Blackburn, he sums up his radical grassroots philosophy: "We, the homeless and formerly homeless, have to be the ones who run the shelters, the homes, the soup kitchens, the welfare... but this will be a struggle because there is no way the poverty pimps are going to give up the shelter system as it is now, and the welfare system as it is now." Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A memoir recounting the struggles of a black Puerto Rican activist who helps others trapped, as he once was, in cycles of poverty, addiction, and homelessness. Casanova, vice president of the National Union of the Homeless and editor of the Union of the Homeless National News, shares two stories: his personal account of growing up in orphanages, on city streets, in detention centers and prisons; and the contemporary struggles of the homeless, especially on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. What emerges is a perturbing portrait of a callous, inefficient bureaucracy. The memoir's strength is its detailed indictment of various so-called ``helping'' institutions. Particularly disturbing is Casanova's depiction of Matteawan State Hospital, where he spent part of his adolescence, and where he witnessed mentally ill patients being routinely beaten, drugged, and placed in straitjackets by sadistic correction officers. Casanova was 16 when he saw officers ``take a patient, wrap towels around his neck . . . and drag him down the long ward until he was dead.'' He asserts that incompetent doctors were also responsible for many deaths, which were routinely dismissed as heart failures. Casanova's negative experiences taught him that ``all institutions tend to want you to remain dependent on them.'' He lashes out at the welfare system, aspects of Christianity and its various institutions, as well as left-liberal politicians. There is nothing one can depend on, Casanova concludes, other than oneself. Diagnosed as HIV-positive at age 51, Casanova sees his task--and that of all true activists and social workers--as not just feeding people, but providing them with the tools to feed themselves. Many institutions, and American society in general, are indicted in this angry memoir for failing to do that. Though the prose is often lackluster, this is a valuable firsthand account of a street survivor's harrowing experiences. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.