Homeless at Home

This practice-led Masters Research comprises a creative artefact and an exegesis addressing the following research questions:

1. How are children of hoarders represented in cultural texts, particularly Australian Young Adult fiction?

2. How can the lived experience of being raised by a hoarder be contextualised by the research in order to contribute to the literary landscape of this under-represented group?

My creative artefact is a Young Adult novel, Homeless at Home (Gamble 2021), loosely based on the researcher’s lived experience raised by a hoarder. Literature gathered from America, United Kingdom and Australia reveals that children of hoarders are an under-represented group within the literary landscape of Young Adult fiction, particularly in Australia. Of the limited texts available in Australia, this research identifies that no other Young Adult novel, informed by lived experience and featuring a protagonist that is the child of a hoarder, exists in Australia. A case study of the American novel, Dirty Little Secrets, by C. J. Omololu (2010), together with an examination of cultural texts such as the television program Hoarder Next Door (2012), reveals that cultural representations of hoarders and children of hoarders contribute to negative community conceptions. In response to this, my creative work produces a story that does not demonise the hoarder and offers readers, particularly those who identify as children of a hoarder, a hopeful and positive resolution. Homeless at Home displays how every area of the protagonist’s daily life is negatively impacted as a result of living with a parent with Hoarding Disorder. The narrative speaks to how the mother’s hoard exacerbates the challenges of being a teenager, increasing her social isolation and filling her with shame. Ultimately, the protagonist must decide whether to save her mother’s stuff or herself.

The exegesis includes a literature review exploring common themes of relevance amongst children of hoarders, hoarders and lived experience. Two case studies analyse a Young Adult novel, Dirty Little Secrets (Omololu 2010), and a memoir, Diary of a Hoarder’s Daughter (Winters 2011). These texts are explored with the goal of informing how my creative work references and contextualises material from the Literature Review. The analyses of these texts provide strategies which guided me in the construction of the novel and sharpened characterisations, particularly in relation to the representation of hoarders and children of hoarders. Academic research gathered from a variety of disciplines, such as health, psychology, psychiatry, community and government, reveal key themes of relevance shown to mirror both my lived experience and peer lived experiences. Findings are woven in to the narrative utilising a practice-led research methodological framework.

This research project gives voice to the under-represented group identified as children of hoarders. It is significant because it fills a gap in the Young Adult fiction market, contributing to the literary landscape of Australian Young Adult fiction and enabling readers, health professionals, community and government workers to gain a deeper understanding of the experiences of young adults growing up in a hoarding environment.