In the Booth with Ruth – Jacqueline S. Homan, Author

What’s your writing background? When did you begin writing and what inspired you? 

My writing background includes bioethics articles, most of which were ghostwritten for others and published in medical journals, science and technology articles for Edwin Black’s online newspaper, The Cutting Edge News, blogs, and five non-fiction books that centre on social and political criticism and social justice.

What inspired me to write in the first place is that I am a marginalized woman—from deep inter-generational poverty, and I am also an exited woman who escaped sexual exploitation as a homeless orphaned teen. Like so many other poor and marginalized exited women, my voice and real lived experiences are never heard.  So I decided to do my best to change that, because words not only convey thoughts they create fact. Very few truly understand what it is to be shoved aside and erased and left for dead more than destitute exited women with nothing, no family, no avenue of legal remedy, and no support network—not even any welfare or medical care. 

How often do you write? And how do you manage to fit in writing among other commitments? 

I have been very long-term unemployed, so I have nothing else except my writing and some online computer programming tutorials. And since I don’t have kids or pets or family, I can devote all my time to writing. 

In which genre do you most enjoy writing? 

Social justice, particularly from a woman’s perspective. My book, Without Apology, addresses the sex trade and government policy against the backdrop of diminished access to birth control and abortion in America. My aim was to reorient and challenge commonly assumed knowledge on the real history and status of women from a feminist analysis and my perspective as an exited woman. I drew from disparate events, topics, and interpretations to synthesize the realities and experience of being female in a patriarchal construct. If you possess two X chromosomes, and want to know what to do next, you must read it. 

My first book, Classism for Dimwits, addresses the policies of benign neglect and systemic social inequalities and how social exclusion keeps the jobless poor marginalized and unemployable. One of the issues I address is the 800 lb elephant that some of the finest of policy-making minds deliberately ignored and continue to ignore: welfare and subsidized housing was cut for the poor, spending for incarceration burgeoned. Public spending for the prison industry went from $33 billion in 1990 to $216 billion in 2010, an increase of 660%. The largest increase in incarceration rates for the poor happened under Clinton’s watch when “welfare as we know it” ended. During the 1990’s the federal corrections budget increased by $19 billion while the federal budget for subsidized housing under HUD was slashed by $17 billion. A nation that discards its poor to “balance the budget” for more money than it costs to help the poor does not practice the “personal responsibility” it preaches. Our society really hates the poor (most of whom are women) and will spend money to destroy the poor before spending that same amount to help the poor. This was done in the name of “law and order” and “personal responsibility” as poverty itself was criminalized.

My fourth book, Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie, constructs a picture of our current patriarchal, hierarchical Western societies (particularly the U.S., with its almost medieval religiosity) as being directly descended from the pre-Christian European patriarchal societies of Greece, Troy, and Rome. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a no-holds-barred perspective on how misogyny and patriarchy persist so doggedly in our supposedly modern, post-Enlightenment era.

My second book, Eyes of a Monster, is a true crime story. It begins with the gruesome hate crime that unfurled in Bristol Township, which is nestled in the heart of Bucks County—the wealthiest of Pennsylvania’s sixty-seven counties. It is in this slice of blue-collar middle class  suburban heaven that the dormant seeds of anti-gay hatred bore fruit in the ultimate censorship: the murder of a young gay artist—Anthony Vito Milano. Eyes of a Monster shows how classism permeates American jurisprudence and how complicated the death penalty appeals system really is. This story is also one about three men: one who was trying to come to terms with his sexuality, and two who were trying to defend theirs. 

What draws you to write in that genre?

My own life experience as a destitute American woman who was prostituted in a strip joint at age thirteen by members of an outlaw motorcycle gang who were my older sister’s “friends”. 

Can you tell me about your current project(s)?

My most recent book, Without Apology, which I just published on 13 March 2013, addresses some of the underlying cultural mores and abusive social and economic government policies that act in synergy to create and perpetuate a prostitute class, and the similarities (and often direct ties) between sexual exploitation of women and reproductive exploitation and abuse. 

What are your writing plans for the future? 

I am trying to set up an investigative reporting interview in person with a porn mogul’s retired and terminally ill chauffeur who was an eyewitness to a human trafficking ring in Atlanta, Georgia that linked strip clubs, an adoption agency, and brothels and an unwed mothers’ “charity” where trafficked women were sold to strip joint owners and “upscale” brothels, and the girls who were impregnated by johns were literally forced—against their will—to carry their pregnancies to term and give their babies away to rich white childless couples. I will also be contacting Al-Jazeera, since they are looking for women writers and see if that lead pans out, as it would pay some badly needed income as I have zero income right now, except for food stamps and whatever royalties I get (typically between $20-30/mo) that are contingent on how many people buy my books. 

Where can people find out more about you? 

My blog: http://godlessfeminist.wordpress.com

My books on Amazon US

My books on Amazon UK 

My fundraiser to save my eyesight: Help Save a Sister’s Sight

And of course, there’s always Google 🙂