Still Here, Still Feral by Marcus Arseneault

Still Here, Still Feral is a memoir about surviving the systems that were supposed to keep me safe, and figuring out what a life looks like after they are done deciding where I sleep. I grew up through foster care, group homes and psychiatric hospitals. Later came homelessness, addiction, sex work, incarceration and federal prison. Much of my life was documented, assessed, confined and reduced to whatever label fit inside somebody else's file. This is not a tidy redemption story. There is prison family. Meth. Violence. Love. Queerness. Mental illness. A hundred days in a homeless shelter. An unexpected engagement. Eventually there is something much less dramatic and somehow enormous: a key to my own door. I am not interested in turning survival into inspiration porn. I spent most of my life being watched. This book is about what happened inside all that paperwork, and finally choosing to be seen.