Nomadland

(13) This a a journalist's account of the phenomena of living in a van or an RV driving around the country off the grid and accepting short term jobs like working in an Amazon warehouse or being a camp host in national forests and campgrounds. Making just enough to survive, buy groceries, do repairs on your vehicle, etc. Apparently there is a growing class of people that should be retirees but that couldn't scrape together enough to retire on after eking out a middle class living. It is depressing as hell. Many of these people are smart and resourceful and there is a whole underground of leaders, you-tubers, unofficial gatherings, etc. The author follows one 66 yo woman, Linda, in particular. Somebody's sweet grandmother forced to live show more in a tiny RV parked in Walmart parking lots. Her dream is to build some sort of a biosphere out in the dessert, self-sustaining - needing nothing she can't get from the Earth and a bit of elbow grease. I dunno...

I thought the author did an excellent job depicting these individuals - according them the dignity they deserve, but also pointing out some hard truths. Many of them really are just eating a shit sandwich and pretending to like it. Interestingly, they are almost all white people and she muses carefully and eloquently about why this might be. I loved the quote from the satirical website - "Things that White People Do" - hilarious; what most black people call their worst nightmare, white people call "camping." The bootstraps American in me blamed the victims - these people must have made some very poor choices to end up in this situation. And the author doesn't outright deny that. These people lost jobs, had health problems like 'headaches,' "bad investments," "bad divorces," alcoholism - The author states these things in a non-judgmental way but still... There was no one who just decided to do it -- just for fun. Even the author herself would apply for these seasonal gigs just to see what they were like and then quit them after a few weeks. They were decidedly not fun. I also liked that the author did not bring these peoples politics into the book. It was refreshing to not have to read about a backdrop of political partisanship; it didn't matter.

Anyway, intriguing, well written. I have both empathy and a desire to blame the victims which to me says that this struck a chord with me. How close are any of us to being in a situation like this this? Or what would I do in a situation like this? I would never find myself in a situation like this. Right? Right?.... show less

Journalist Jessica Bruder writes about subcultures. In 2014 for an article in Harper's Magazine, Bruder profiled Linda May, a retired woman who lives in a camper, traveling the U.S. and taking seasonal jobs with campgrounds, an Amazon warehouse, and the like, and was introduced to a whole bunch of "workampers" who do the same. After a couple of years of interviews, and living temporarily in an RV of her own while working at an Amazon warehouse and beet factory, Bruder presented this book showing these folks in all their complexity.

If I had one takeaway from this book, it's that workampers are not a one-size-fits-all monolith. There are many reasons they would take to the road, from financial necessity to a desire for freedom from the show more rat race - or some combination of the two. They are hard-working, often debt-free, often what we'd picture as "retirement age", and mostly white. And while it's hard to pin down an exact number, there were about 300,000 when the book was published (2017), a number that seems to be growing. I found it fascinating, sometimes heartbreaking, thought-provoking - all the qualities you'd want in a book club choice. Highly recommended. show less

This is the best proof for the disintegrating States. The U.S. is the economically most powerful country just because it is so incredibly unjust and unequal. I can relate to the fact that people feel so left out and behind by the affluent part of the population. It's like different countries within the same territory. Except for patriotism there isn't much to glue everything together, and even that is dwindling. In fact it's surprising to see how fervently people who have nothing to thank their country for cling to this notion of greatness that they aren't part of. I wonder what happens if all this energy finds a negative outlet.

“In America, if you don’t have an address, you’re not a real person.”

This book is copyrighted 2017, and things have only gotten worse.
In my town, Novato, CA, there have been a long string of RVs along Airport Road for a few years now. And a homeless encampment around our public library. I myself am a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service, but my salary in this county (Marin County) qualifies me as low income. At one time, a mail carrier could own a home in this country and support a family on his/her lone income. Not anymore... "This is not a wage gap - it's a chasm."

This book details the shame of the United States, its people being unable to afford housing. "Nomads", "houseless", or folks living in "wheel estate" show more because they can't afford a “stick-and-brick” home, or even the rent. They have to decide what they can pay for - food or dental work, mortgage or electricity, rent or student loan, warm clothes or gas to get to work? "When do impossible choices start to tear people - a society - apart?" Can’t get a raise? Live in your vehicle... You can be a workamper, “...modern mobile travelers who take temporary jobs around the U.S. in exchange for a free campsite...”! Fun, huh? Like “Grapes of Wrath” fun! But instead of picking fruit, a lot of these poor folks end up picking packages in Amazon warehouses. Which sounds tough too - “If I can do the Army, I can do Amazon.” And Amazon “reaps federal tax credits” for hiring them! SMH.

Interesting how white privilege is part of this. Of course it is. Another, even worse, shame of the United States.

I want to go to Quartzsite.

“These mobile shelters are everywhere - an invisible city, hidden in plain sight.” show less

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/nomadland/

I’m a huge sucker for the participant-observer mode of anthropology, and this brand of “immersive journalism” comes very close to it. Good writing like this lets the stories come out in their own way and their own time, and although the book is not long, nobody is rushed into fitting into a film scene. Inevitably the book ends up angrier than the film, even if its subjects in general accept their lot, because the mere facts of what the USA is doing to its own people are so enraging, and decent reportage will bring that out.

It also reminded me of Svetlana Alexievich, though Alexievich rarely inserts herself into the narrative as Bruder perforce has to, and her subject matter is much rawer. show more The collapse of the Soviet Union and the impact on its people was far more gruesome and broad than what has happened in America. So far. show less

Nomadland is the story of (mostly) older people for whom their retirement years are not "golden"--they are not technically homeless, but they live in their RVs or vans and traverse the country in search of seasonal, temporary work. Jessica Bruder spent a great deal of time with the people whose lives she portrays in this book.

The jobs they seek and hold range from janitorial/maintenance work at state and national parks during the summer, to farm work during beet harvest season, to work in one of Amazon's mammoth fulfillment centers during the buildup to the Holidays. The common factor is that the work is usually back-breaking, mind-numbing, and low-paying. In fact, Amazon relies on these workers--they have a name and a logo: "The Camper show more Force." One of the perks of being a Camper Force member is that Amazon provides free OTC pain relievers to these workers to relieve the pain and strain of the heavy lifting and miles walked each day. (I, for one, will be thinking of this each time I order from Amazon in the future.)

The people forced into this new economy include former blue and pink collar workers for whom Social Security is not quite enough to make it on, and also former college professors, software engineers, pastors and other theoretically middle class people. Many of them lost their savings and/or their houses in the financial crisis of 2008.

This is a very sobering book, and I fear that stories like these will become the norm as Congress marches relentlessly on its quest to demolish Social Security and Medicare with the goal of voucherizing Medicare and privatizing Social Security. However, despite the grim outlook, the people depicted in this book are for the most part hopeful and optimistic people who look on the bright side of things, which made it a pleasure to get to know them. Unfortunately, though, we don't need a dystopian novel to see where the future is headed.

4 stars show less

Getting old in America is high risk. Age compels a great sorting. If you have the means to retire or keep working, great. But if you don’t, you have to find a way to keep going anyway.

This is about the people who don’t have the means and come out on the short end. Most, although not all, are older, past their prime working days. Social Security doesn't come close, for them, to paying rent and living expenses. These are people who often for no fault of their own, fell away from the lives they expected and thought they had earned. Bob Wells, a kind of guru of nomadic camper lifestyle, explained it. “At one time there was a social contract that if you played by the rules (went to school, got a job, and worked hard) everything would show more be fine. That’s no longer true today. You can do everything right, just the way society wants you to do it, and still end up broke, alone, and homeless.”

Many of the people Bruder met in her years of observing and participating in the camper culture came out on the wrong side of the sorting not because they weren’t skilled or knowledgeable, or because they didn’t work hard, but because their jobs dried up, their retirement savings were destroyed by the 2008 recession, or they met with injuries or medical conditions that ended their most productive and rewarding years of work. Or all of those things.

They made a last stand. They sold their houses (if they had them) and their belongings, and they hit the road in vans or campers. The act carries a point of pride and hope — rejecting the broken ideal of the suburban home, the “sticks and bricks” and the cocktail hour for the life of freedom on the road.

But freedom on the road isn’t financial freedom. These are “workampers” — people living in vans, RVs, cars, whatever they can make into a rolling home, moving from short term work to short term work. They earn low wages, work long shifts, enjoy no benefits, and have no security of employment from day to day.

On the other side of the equation are the enablers — the providers of those short term work opportunities. Amazon’s CamperForce program is the most prominent. These are temporary jobs at Amazon’s fulfillment centers. The jobs provide exactly those low wages, long shifts, lack of benefits (there do seem to be some healthcare benefits at least related to job-site injuries), and no security of employment. Plus facilities for parking and living out of vans, RVs, campers, or whatever the workers may have.

Amazon isn’t the only one. There are state campground host jobs (provided through private contractors), big agriculture (Bruder put in some short time at an American Crystal Sugar plant in Minnesota during the annual beet harvest), and others.

Certainly these employers exploit the availability and plight of the nomadic workers. The workers are a captive labor force. They are dependent on such opportunities, and they accept the conditions. It’s a hard bargain. Many, like the book’s most central figure, Linda May, hope to make and save enough to never have to go back, to find some stability and security.

The strength of the book is Bruder’s portrayals of people like Linda May, Bob Wells, and Charlene Swankie (all of whom portray themselves in the movie based on the book). You see vividly in their lives and in their words that tension between pride in the life they’ve chosen as a best option and the precariousness of that life. They wouldn’t have chosen it if they had practical alternatives, and they are staking their pride now on those virtues of independence and freedom — classic if hard worn American virtues.

As a reader, you feel for the precarious lives of the people Bruder portrays. And you have to admire them, too. Bruder summarizes, “The truth as I see it is that people can both struggle and remain upbeat simultaneously, through even the most soul-testing of challenges. This doesn’t mean they’re in denial. Rather, it testifies to the remarkable ability of humankind to adapt, to seek meaning and kinship when confronted with adversity.”

I know after having read this book that i see the campers and vans in my own city, and the people who live in them, with more respect. And I’m afraid they’re only the beginning. show less