SURVIVING THE ODD

Milo recounts growing up in her family’s halfway house in 1970s San Jose.

In her debut memoir, the actor describes her unusual upbringing. Her life was upended when her father, Tony Milo, who was a child actor and then singer and comic (Milo describes him as “the ultimate vaudevillian chameleon”), decided to open Milo Arms Board and Care Home, a frat house converted to a residence for those forced out of state-run psychiatric hospitals on the orders of Richard Nixon and then Gov. Ronald Reagan. Serving folks who often didn’t have money or real-world skills, the Milo Arms was created to rehabilitate its residents or at least stave off their homelessness; Milo’s parents even held camping trips and ran a newsletter “for residents, by residents.” The memoir is crisply told, with punchy lines and plenty of humor and vivid descriptions: “Laughter floated downstairs. Toilets flushed. Water ran. Thump, drag. Dennis was coming downstairs.” For all its charming rhythms, the house and its residents embarrassed young Milo, who longed for relationships with other kids her age. In one episode, when her schoolmates wouldn’t attend her birthday party, she received gifts from the residents, who attended instead. Challenging as it was, life at the Milo Arms, along with her parents’ deep sense of compassion, shaped Milo’s perspective and sense of humanity. Milo ably weaves in chapters that study the social effects of deinstitutionalization (the closing of state-run psychiatric hospitals), which led to the homelessness of 200,000-plus ill people, with those that address the ways she adapted to her unusual living situation and housemates. Black-and-white photos are included.

A nuanced, affecting memoir that sheds light on the effects of deinstitutionalization.