Nomadland

surviving America in the twenty-first century

273 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 2017

ISBN:
9780393249316
OCLC Number:
971352344

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (3 reviews)

"From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon's CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming a growing community of nomads: migrant laborers who call themselves "workampers." In a secondhand vehicle she christens "Van Halen," Jessica Bruder hits the road to get to know her subjects more intimately. Accompanying her irrepressible protagonist, Linda May, and others, from campground toilet cleaning to warehouse product scanning to desert reunions, then moving on to the dangerous work of beet harvesting, Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy--one that foreshadows the precarious …

1 edition

Welcome to the future

4 stars

On one level, this book shows its origins in magazine articles as it skips around a bunch of views of the same topic, and repeats itself a few times (the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous is introduced several times, for instance), but it works because the subject matter is so strong. I'd not seen the film of this, so while I knew about people living in vans, I wasn't aware of just how many there were in the US, nor how old a lot of them were. It's a recreation of a past way of life on the road, but also a signal of what awaits us all, living with less and less and heading back and forth across the country at the beck and call of billionaires and corporations that only see humans as another factor of production, there to be exploited as much as possible. It should be a call …

Brutal indictment of society, the freedom of being one step above desperate

3 stars

Journalistic stark account of precarious migrant labor of would-be retirees, especially post-2008 but many stories and paths to being unable to afford housing and able to scrape by with some sense of independence as long as your body holds up to exhausting physical labor of cleaning outhouses, amusement parks, warehouse fulfillment, or beet harvesting.

avatar for aneel

rated it

4 stars

Subjects

  • Recreational vehicle living
  • Retirement
  • Working poor
  • Van life
  • Older people
  • Casual labor
  • Employment
  • Retirees
  • Migrant labor

Places

  • United States