Out of the Rain — Tom Fowler

This anthology of short stories, poems, drawings and photographs by and about the homeless of San Francisco bears witness to their plight and to the dignity with which they face hardship, and will go a long way toward correcting the tendency to pity the homeless as a group but to ignore them as individuals with strong voices and visions. The poems, while technically unaccomplished, combine colloquialisms with the meter of popular song lyrics to portray the authors' musings upon subjects as varied as atheism and alcoholism. The short stories, too, illuminate their inner worlds and are noteworthy for a lack of guile and self-indulgence. In ``Conversations,'' for example, a woman recalls that her uncle, after raping her, told her ``never to tell anyone cause if I did, I would be punished and God would put me in hell, big Deal. I didn't have to worry about that because I put myself there already.'' The sketches and photographs are movingly evocative as well. Chronicling homeless persons' emotions, experiences and personal philosophies in their own words and artwork, this book provides rare insight and shatters stereotypes. (June)