Jessica Bruder, NOMADLAND
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[2:02]Jessica Bruder is the author of No Bad Land, Surviving America in the 21st century.
[2:08]For her book, she spent months living in a camper van documenting itinerant Americans who gave up
[2:15]traditional housing and hit the road full-time, enabling them to travel from job to job,
[2:19]and carve out a place for themselves in a precarious economy.
[2:22]The projects span three years and more than 15,000 miles of driving from coast to coast
[2:27]and from Mexico to the Canadian border.
[2:29]No Mad Land was recently adapted into a golden globe-winning film starring Francis McDormant.
[2:35]Welcome, Jessica.
[2:36]Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books.
[2:39]Thank you for having me Zibioins.
[2:40]Good to be here.
[2:41]Congratulations on all the success of No Mad Land, the movie coming out to such a claim,
[2:47]the fact that you wrote it, the whole accomplishment of it in and of itself is amazing.
[2:52]It's a fantastic book, as you well know.
[2:54]So much research, so much time.
[2:56]Do you ever want to drive again after this whole experience?
[2:59]Or are you ready to take off on the road?
[3:01]Yes.
[3:02]A lot for quarantine, you better believe it.
[3:04]My camper van named Halen is currently stranded in my front backyard in Reno.
[3:09]I hear it's been savaged, I feel my stare, but I can't wait to spend a day with a
[3:14]shot back getting it ready to get out on the road again.
[3:16]Oh my gosh.
[3:17]So what was it like at the beginning?
[3:19]I know you started this off just as a smaller piece when you were investigating
[3:23]this subculture of nomadic Americans essentially adapting to today's times.
[3:29]When did you know you had something just really big on your hands?
[3:33]Like what was it like?
[3:33]How did you get immersed in the culture?
[3:36]Tell me like the story of how it became the book it is today.
[3:40]Yeah, so it started out with a girl in a tent and a rental car.
[3:45]There was no camper van.
[3:47]I was doing a story for Harper's magazine and they had offered to put me up in a hotel for two
[3:51]nights in this town, Courtside Arizona, which figures heavily in the book and the movie.
[3:55]And I figured, you know, I'm not going to get anything in two nights.
[3:59]This isn't a kind of story you can parachute into and then just do, you know, it's not a quick hit.
[4:04]So I borrowed a tent and I stayed out in the desert for a couple weeks and just talked to people.
[4:10]I was, gosh, I was near some people who were living in a school bus.
[4:14]I ended up getting taken by somebody else.
[4:18]I haven't met to an event called the rubber tramp rendezvous where van dwellers were doing
[4:23]all sorts of cell shares and the world really opened up.
[4:26]So when it came out in Harper's, I was exciting.
[4:28]It was the first time I'd written for them and it was on the cover.
[4:31]And I felt like I'd barely scratched the surface.
[4:33]I had so many more questions and I was not remotely tired of the reporting.
[4:38]So I was thrilled when I had the chance to make it into a book and get back out there.
[4:41]There's time in a van following up on some of these stories that I felt like it only just started
[4:46]to understand. Where did you end up on how Amazon treats employees?
[4:51]I'm just curious. There was like a huge article in the paper I think yesterday in the
[4:54]New York Times about regulation on how Amazon treats employees and everything.
[4:59]And after all of the camp allusions to it, where did you fall on that spectrum?
[5:04]Yeah. I mean, a big picture here, which more people need to talk about.
[5:08]I think is that we have a horrible problem with monopolies in the US.
[5:13]We have antitrust laws that have not kept up with the times that have not been enforced.
[5:18]We have a national labor relations board that's been weekend and OSHA.
[5:22]There's no oversight right now and we've created the system where it's winner take all
[5:28]and companies can do whatever they want.
[5:30]So people seem constantly surprised that that doesn't always lead to the best labor conditions.
[5:35]But I really think we need to look at this from the top if we want to get anything done.
[5:39]So, so yeah, I mean, everybody I was in there doing a camper force.
[5:44]I actually did a short film at Laura Poetris and it's tough.
[5:48]And I'm glad that people are paying more attention to it now.
[5:50]Even though the union drive in Alabama didn't make it.
[5:53]And how was it going back and assembling all this research?
[5:56]I mean, all the time you spent on the road, all the amazing characters you really painted
[6:01]so fully like you've like completely realistic.
[6:05]I mean, I mean, I know they were basically well, sorry, I keep like mixing my
[6:09]stuttering out of my board stand and what my problem is.
[6:11]Anyway, tell me about the writing process itself of this book.
[6:14]How did you take so much time and data and experience and people and then convert it into
[6:20]like a highly readable and grossing work?
[6:23]Oh my God.
[6:24]Well, it was completely crazy making as well start with admitting.
[6:28]I call my writing process building a sand castle with tweezers.
[6:31]I don't think it's really the best way to write, but it's how I do it.
[6:35]I'm slow and meticulous.
[6:37]And some people shovel and then go back to sculpt it later.
[6:40]I choose.
[6:41]So for me, it was all about deciding that I wanted to follow this one woman, Linda May.
[6:47]And then that would be the backbone of the story.
[6:50]And everything else would kind of be like the ribs turning off of it.
[6:54]So for me, she was the guide.
[6:57]And then I could take side trips with other characters.
[7:00]I could put in a bit of my own undercover and investigative reporting.
[7:04]But hopefully the reader could hang on to the ride because they had one person
[7:08]they were following all the way through.
[7:10]So that was how I tried to do it at least.
[7:12]And then did you feel this sense of coming full circle when Linda May was actually in the movie then
[7:17]as well?
[7:18]Like what is her life like now?
[7:20]Yeah, Linda's doing great.
[7:22]Yeah, I last I last saw her at the premiere in Los Angeles.
[7:25]It's surreal.
[7:26]I was outside at the Rose Bowl with Ash falling from the sky.
[7:30]Oh my gosh.
[7:31]And she's doing great.
[7:33]She's really excited by the success of the movie.
[7:35]We still talk all the time.
[7:37]And I'm glad that she feels good about it too because seeing her on screen and getting
[7:41]her story heard and feeling validated.
[7:43]I mean, that that's been incredibly moving for me too as a writer.
[7:47]So how do you think more people can shift from this like homeless
[7:51]to houseless dichotomy that you discuss in the book, right?
[7:55]Like the people here, it's completely intentional, right?
[7:58]They have made the choice to be in their vans or wherever they've chosen to live.
[8:04]And yet the problem of homelessness is so pervasive.
[8:07]I feel like it's a difference of perspective in some part.
[8:11]But there's also this community behind the people who are living this camper lifestyle.
[8:16]Tell me a little more about that.
[8:17]Yeah, I mean, a lot of people I met on the road while they'd chosen to be there had also found
[8:23]that they couldn't stay in traditional housing because of so many economic and social forces,
[8:27]whether it's flat wages and rising rents or the failure of retirement finance.
[8:31]So it's a pretty complex and nuanced situation.
[8:34]In terms of the word homeless, it has become such a dirty word in American society.
[8:39]I remember reading a newspaper story not long ago and there's a picture and it said,
[8:43]homeless man looks at shirt or whatever it was.
[8:47]And I was thinking, this is a person with a name.
[8:49]So one of my great hopes for the movie and for the book is that when people have been inside
[8:55]a different experience that when they look at people, they'll wonder what those people
[9:01]have to say in terms of what their story is rather than just trying to kind of slop them
[9:05]in this American caste system.
[9:07]So for me, that's that's what I hope comes out of it.
[9:10]Does that make sense?
[9:10]Course it is.
[9:11]Now, I mean, that seems to be such an overarching theme of trying to figure out
[9:18]who people really are asking questions, not taking things at face value, no matter what the
[9:23]situation is, right?
[9:24]Everybody has, everybody has like books worth of stories inside them.
[9:29]And just because somebody is in dire straits, I mean, those stories are probably much more
[9:33]interesting.
[9:33]Anyway, I mean, I don't know.
[9:35]I feel like there's, you know, this American shorthand of how we judge everybody.
[9:39]And it's without asking the right questions.
[9:42]It's hard to get to the bottom of it.
[9:43]Yeah.
[9:44]I mean, I love the right perspective on it.
[9:45]And it likes to say it's our job to make things more complicated rather than less.
[9:50]And I really like that idea about what writers and writing can do that it might actually
[9:55]be our jobs to kind of honor the complexity out there in the world.
[9:59]Rather.
[10:00]then try to just reduce it.
[10:02]So I'm into that.
[10:03]Yeah, and what have you been working on since?
[10:07]I've been working on a magazine story in some pitches
[10:10]and teaching and I can't really talk about the specifics
[10:12]right now because they're not out in the world.
[10:14]And because I work in nonfiction,
[10:16]that means the things I'm writing about
[10:18]are out there all the time and available to everybody.
[10:23]So I'm going to just keep it a little quiet.
[10:26]But thank you for asking.
[10:27]No problem.
[10:27]Thank you for not answering.
[10:30]Did you always want to do this with your life?
[10:33]Did you set out to be a reporter, journalist?
[10:35]No, author.
[10:37]Is this what you wanted when you were little?
[10:39]I've always loved writing, but I don't think
[10:42]I would know I would want to do it this way.
[10:44]The way journalism lets you go out and be a constant learner
[10:48]and explore the world for me is incredibly exciting.
[10:52]And writing is something I've always loved to do.
[10:54]So for me, it's a really good match, but I didn't see it coming.
[10:57]I think it wasn't until after college
[11:00]when I had some friends who were journalists and saw what
[11:03]they were up to that I really became intrigued with that.
[11:06]So what would you say?
[11:08]What advice would you give to aspiring journalists?
[11:11]If you could go back to telling yourself something,
[11:13]back in the college.
[11:15]Oh, yeah.
[11:17]Get out there and keep pushing.
[11:19]Get out there, get curious.
[11:21]Ask yourself what it is that makes you curious about certain things
[11:25]because you want to be writing a kind of stuff
[11:28]you'd want to read.
[11:29]And if you can get a sense for your own, again,
[11:32]what draws you to certain subjects in the world
[11:34]and where they might resonate with other people,
[11:37]I think you'll have a good radar for going after stories.
[11:41]That's true.
[11:41]It's always a good thing to write what you want to read.
[11:45]Otherwise, how will you even know if it's good?
[11:48]Yeah, exactly.
[11:48]You don't want to read it at home.
[11:49]Right, exactly.
[11:50]We'll talk about it because you'll have to read.
[11:52]Yeah, I don't want to read this.
[11:54]What did I write it?
[11:55]No.
[11:56]I wrote that.
[11:57]Oh, shoot.
[11:58]I don't know.
[12:00]Well, do you miss the characters you met along the way?
[12:02]Like, do you ever long for that lifestyle yourself?
[12:06]OK, do I miss them?
[12:07]Yeah, but I also talk to them all the time.
[12:09]OK, I'm just kind of.
[12:11]And everybody's on Facebook.
[12:13]I think that's why I've still kept my Facebook profile,
[12:16]just because I've talked to them that way.
[12:18]And do I miss it?
[12:19]I like dipping in and out of it very much.
[12:23]And I'm grateful that I get to do that.
[12:24]So I'm happy to be home.
[12:26]You can't see it, but I've got more plants
[12:28]than you can shake it.
[12:29]We face to get.
[12:30]I've got a dog.
[12:31]So I'm kind of nested in here.
[12:33]But I love being out on the road.
[12:34]I love just getting behind the wheel of the van
[12:37]and seeing places and people that somebody who
[12:40]grew up in the Northeast.
[12:41]Still feel fresh and new to me.
[12:43]So yeah, a little bit of both is what I like.
[12:46]Awesome.
[12:47]Amazing.
[12:48]Well, thank you, Jessica.
[12:49]Thanks for coming on mom's Don't I read books
[12:51]for this short chat about your book and the movie
[12:55]and everything else.
[12:56]So thank you.
[12:57]Thanks for having me today.
[13:00]Thank you, Slumperkins, for sponsoring today's episode.
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[13:08]Thanks for listening to this episode of Mom's Don't
[13:11]Have Time to Read Books.
[13:12]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
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[13:24]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
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[13:28]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[13:30]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.