Renton Library Meaningful Movies hosts our 2nd event with an online discussion of LGBTQIA+.

Imagine yourself 18 years old wandering city streets without a place to go to sleep or eat or shelter from the cold. Imagine you’re homeless because your parents kicked you out when they discovered you are gay or transgender.

This is the subject of “A Road to Home” which follows six LGBT youth through New York City as they learn to survive in the streets, then struggle to find beds, jobs, and some sense of purpose and direction for their lives. Four have grown up in poverty, two not. Five are people of color, one not. All have been rejected. Their lives typify the experience of the 500,000 homeless youth on American streets every night, 40% of them LGBT.

In the course of their journeys, four of the youths in “A Road to Home” get aid from the Ali Forney Center, a program devoted solely to homeless LGBTQ youth. The struggle of its founder Carl Siciliano to keep its programs alive mirrors the journeys of the kids themselves. What the film reveals is not only the dangers, the fears, the lonely anxiety of being homeless, but also the resulting wounds to the heart that must be healed. The six characters in this film are determined that their current traumas will not define them for the rest of their lives.

Winner of Best Documentary and Best Directing in a Documentary at the Portsmouth International Film Festival. Official Selection at the Manhattan Film Festival.

“Important! The film about homeless LGBTQ youth that we needed” –Daniela Costa, AfterEllen

Please watch “A Road to Home” before joining the discussion. The film is available for free on Kanopy using your King County Library System (KCLS) library card – https://kcls.kanopy.com/. If you have questions, contact Jennifer at jwooten@kcls.org.

Register for the online discussion here https://kcls.bibliocommons.com/events/5ecee90442f48b4500ade77a before 1pm on June 24. A Zoom invite will be sent to the email you register with the day of the event.