Child Welfare Activist David Ambroz At Elliott Bay Book To Talk About Memoir “A Place Called Home”

November 29, 2022• byMichael Strangeways

He’s a nationally known advocate for child welfare and activist for children and families dealing with homelessness and now David Abramoz has written a memoir about his own experiences when he was living on the streets of New York City with his own family and coping with the reality of being an at-risk child dealing with issues of poverty. A Place Called Home: A Memoir (Legacy Lit/Hachette) was published earlier this fall to rave reviews and on Thursday, December 1st, the author comes to Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company to talk about his book and what it was like to not only be the child in a family dealing with homelessness but also navigating the world of social welfare and foster care as a gay youth.

“A Place Called Home will take your breath away. It’s a must read for anyone who’s looked at a raggedy street family and asked, ‘Who are those people?’ It’s also for everyone who cares about “Those People.” You will fall in love with David Ambroz, his beautifully-told, gut-wrenching story, and his great big heart.”

―Jeannette Walls

It’s a compelling story of the hardships he faced with his sister and brother and coping with a mentally ill mother incapable of caring for her kids. Her illness resulted in decisions that put Ambroz at great risk, including her belief that Ambroz should be circumsized long past the normal time for such a procedure to occur. Eventually, her actions forced Ambroz to seek out help from the welfare system but even it that world guaranteed shelter and food for him, it didn’t always provide feelings of being accepted as a gay person.

From an interview with NPR, Ambroz describes his struggles with the foster care system and foster parents trying to “de-gay” him:

“Right from my first residential foster home, they diagnosed me as gay. And the foster parents, the therapist and the system went to work to help me be not gay. I think what’s even more evil to me is all of us that do nothing. I think the people that I write about deserve condemnation, but all of us should ask ourselves, what are we doing? Because the people I write about should not be foster parents – some of them. However, the more pernicious part is all of the adults that I walked amongst that do nothing – that let these people foster – that let the condition of hundreds of thousands of children every single day experience that. They were horrendous. They were horrendous people. They had no capacity to do the task that they were asked to do. But we’re underfunding the system, not enough people are stepping up to foster, and what do we expect to have happen?
-David Ambroz

David Ambroz will appear at Elliott Bay Book Company this Thursday, December 1st from 7pm to 8pm in conversation with Ross Hunter, the Washington State Secretary of the Department of Children, Youth, and Families. The event is free.

You can purchase David’s book from Elliott Bay Book Company at the store or here: https://www.elliottbaybook.com/item/uG_5-sYoQbSp3WI1X95giA

About the Author: Michael Strangeways

As the Editorial Director/Co-Owner, Michael Strangeways writes, edits and does about a million other jobs for Seattle Gay Scene, Puget Sound's most visited LGBTQ news, arts and entertainment website now celebrating its 14th year as a media outlet. A semi-proud Midwesterner by birth, he's lived in Seattle since 2000. He's also a film producer who would like you to check out the Jinkx Monsoon documentary, "Drag Becomes Him" now available on Amazon.com. In his spare time, he gets slightly obsessive about his love for old movies, challenging theater, "otters", vodka, chocolate, "I,Claudius", Lizzie Borden, real books made out of paper, disaster films, show tunes, Weimar era Germany, flea markets, pop surrealistic art, the sex lives of Hollywood actors both living and dead, kitties, chicken fried steak, haute couture and David Bowie. But, not necessarily in that order.