Coming out to the streets: LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness Brandon A. Robinson California: University of California Press, 2020, 249 pp. PDF. eBook $29.95. ISBN 9780520971073.

• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Author: Alexis I. Carraway
• Date: 01 September 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.456

World Med. & Health Policy. 2022;14:613–614. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/wmh3 © 2021 Policy Studies Organization

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DOI: 10.1002/wmh3.456

BOOK REVIEW

Coming out to the streets: LGBTQ youth

experiencing homelessness

Brandon A. Robinson

California: University of California Press, 2020, 249 pp. PDF. eBook $29.95. ISBN 9780520971073.

This book is an introspective look into the lives of the often‐overlooked queer youth of the

San Antonio and Austin homeless population. Through the process of interviewing 40

LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness, Robinson explores the systemic institutions and

policies that perpetuate harm against queer youth and lead to their experiences with little to

no stable housing. Compared to similar anthologies, Coming Out to the Streets’focus on

Texan youths provides insight into different racial and ethnic populations as well as the

landscape of the conservative Deep South. The project, and the near year and a half worth

of fieldwork, involved in these pages is the culmination of Robinson's work as a PhD can-

didate at the University of Texas at Austin. Using his background in sociology and gender

and sexuality studies, Robinson brings Queer Theory and Queer Politics into his inter-

viewing, field observations, and analysis to find the underlying threads tying the homeless

LGBTQ youth narratives together in this engaging and thought‐provoking work.

Coming Out to the Streets begins with the story of Zoe, a Hispanic heterosexual

transgender woman, and the complexities that resulted in her stay at, and subsequent

suspension from, an LGBTQ shelter in San Antonio. From negative family reactions, apa-

thetic school staff, and police profiling, Zoe's story starts this book because it highlights the

central theme Robinson discusses in its pages: The disparities experienced by queer youth,

and sustained by the US society, force these youth into situations that perpetuate

homelessness.

Robinson argues that we need to move away from the standard family rejection narrative

as the singular explanation for queer youth homelessness, and instead understand how the

intersection and policing of different identities impact queer youths’living situations. A core

notion of this book is to emphasize “how gender expression and its intersections with other

social categories shape the lives of LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness both before

and during their experiences of homelessness”(p. 8). Through his interviews with these

youth, Robinson proposes a new rationale to explain the complexities surrounding queer

youth's homelessness. He proposes that the intersection of identity, specifically among

black and brown and gender‐nonconforming youth, impacts the way society views and

interacts with the individual. “…Certain LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness—mostly

poor Black and Brown LGBTQ youth—negotiate their gender and sexuality within their

families of origin”(p. 49). His first three chapters detail his main arguments on the root of

queer youth homelessness. First, how growing up with stressors such as prejudice affects

the likelihood of family rejection and the outcomes of it. One youth described her mother's

reaction after finding out she was transgender, “[She] was so pissed off…she called me an

embarrassment—because she grew up in a different lifestyle”(p. 38). Second, how the

policing of queer identity, specifically gender nonconformity, in public institutions force