Making Room

Three Decades of Fighting for Beds, Belonging, and a Safe Place for LGBTQ Youth

By: Carl Siciliano

Narrated by: Carl Siciliano

From a pioneering advocate for LGBTQ youth, a gripping, impassioned account of how an unhoused queer youth's murder compelled him to create the nation's largest housing program for homeless LGBTQ teens.

“A gut-wrenchingly poignant real-life saga . . . an unputdownable account of what it looks like when compassion is harnessed to funding and policy.”—Tim Murphy, author of Christodora and Speech Team

ONE OF CNN’S ESSENTIAL READS FOR PRIDE MONTH AND BEYOND

What power does a long-disenfranchised community hold to transform the treatment of its most abused members? How can we locate that power?

Carl Siciliano met Ali Forney—a Black nonbinary teenager known for fierce loyalty to friends and an unshakeable faith that “my God will love me for who I am”—in 1994 while working at a daytime center for homeless youth in New York City. Nineteen years old, Forney was one of thousands Siciliano encountered who had been driven from their homes by rejecting families, forced to struggle in the streets due to homophobic and transphobic violence in the shelters.

Then Forney was murdered, a moment of horror and devastation that exposed the brutality that teenagers like Forney faced in a city marked by gentrification, racist policing, and the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic. Anguished by Forney’s loss, Siciliano fought to create homes where unhoused queer teens could live safely, with their human dignity at last affirmed, while he helped lead a movement that compelled New York City to invest millions of dollars in kids who’d been ignored for decades.

Siciliano writes with loving affection for Forney and many other queer teens, showing deep respect for their wisdom, courage, and spiritual integrity. Their stories illuminate the harsh realities faced by hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ youths suffering from homelessness across our nation. And, exposing the political and religious forces that continue to endanger LGBTQ youths, he makes a clarion call for their protection.

Written with heart and profound insight, Making Room is a landmark personal narrative, bringing to life an untold chapter of LGBTQ history and testifying to the power of community, solidarity, and the human spirit.

©2024 Carl Siciliano (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Making Room is a must read for anyone who cares about our LGBTQ homeless youth. The story is riveting, emotional, powerful and an important part of our history. Carl has lived a life of service and love.”—David Mixner, activist, performer, and author

“Carl Siciliano’s Making Room guides us from the cold, pitiless streets faced by the homeless youth to a warmer place; from heartbreak to a place of hope. . . . the fate of our queer kids is intertwined with us all.”—Christian Cooper, New York Times bestselling author of Better Living Through Birding

“It is tragic that so many LGBTQ youths are forced into homelessness, all too often due to their parents’ religious beliefs. I hope this compelling book will be read by many in the church as well as many who wished that churches treated LGBTQ youth not like lepers, but who they are: beloved children of God.”—James Martin, SJ, author of Building a Bridge

Wake up and help!

teens, LGBTQ, biography, memoir, multicultural, homelessness, homophobia, homicide, nonfiction, inspirational, parental-abuse, foster-care-abuse, ostracized, ignorance, safety, NYC, destitute, human-rights, humanity, religious-differences, nonprofit, NGO, hope*****

Society as a whole views the homeless (even families!) as an expensive avoidable nuisance, teenagers of any stripe are viewed as problematic, and LGBTQ youth are viewed as even lower than the seediest long-term alcoholic in the streets. Carl Siciliano is the founder and executive director of the Ali Forney Center, dedicated to homeless L.G.B.T.Q. youth and is a nationally recognized advocate and provider for homeless LGBT youth and has been dedicated to this population since 1994. This book recounts the REAL problem (it is us) and the steps he has taken to make a dent in the ignorance of too many and what positive measures have been taken so far. There are stories both of despair and hope that can lead us to become more humane to each other.
Did you ever notice that we have more shelters for animals than we do for broken and abused humans?
I requested and received a free temporary EARC from Convergent Books via NetGalley. But it was not TTS enabled so I bought the epub version but wound up sharing it away. Now I bought the audio and (even better!) it is narrated by the author!