Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

Nomadland by Jessica Bruder is a nonfiction modern day horror novel. I liked the highly appropriate subtitle: Surviving America In The Twenty-First Century. I am an avid fan of fiction horror novels but this real horror story hits close to home. I have read and heard accounts of our aging population choosing between food and medicine, food and housing, and living below the poverty line but many of us hear these accounts only occasionally. We then move on to the next news item. Jessica Bruder puts more precise numbers to this demographic. In only a few cases are “screen” names used to protect privacy. See her “Notes” section for details. Bruder has done an exhaustive study over more than three years and has returned to several sources for follow up interviews. The startling information I read and listened to in the Kindle book and Audible recorded book kept me awake nights.As a baby boomer myself, this is where the baby boomer hippie crowd has landed. Many of that younger 1960s crowd lived what they considered a humanist, moral existence that respected the environment. Without training as doctors, it seemed they respected the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm.” A large majority slipped into mainstream society and went for high earnings, the white picket fence surrounding a home steeply appreciating in value, a solid retirement plan, and a path that would assure their children would be even better off than they themselves were. When retirement arrived, they would not have to depend on their children for support. They would just sit back, relax, and admire the accomplishments of their children. Little did many of them realize they would be returning to an existence that closely mirrored their 1960s existence. This horror story began in 2008.In a time when many countries face a refugee problem, one term that stands out is “economic refugees.” Countries do not want to resettle people who flee their home countries simply because they could not find a job. In this book, Bruder describes US citizen economic refugees. They are not fleeing the US. In many cases, they are moving from place to place seeking all kinds of temporary work just to make ends meet to buy necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. This last item is added to the “big three” because medicine is increasingly necessary for Bruder’s target population. These are the “old people,” the ones the kids don’t visit and don’t support, the ones for which a small social security payment cannot possibly cover the bills, and the ones that must work at ages seventy plus to survive. This book is in small part about corporate and government greed that takes advantage of a captive group. The larger part of the book is the human story.People in this group are diverse. Some have little education, some are self-educated, some have advanced degrees. Many have experience in a variety of service jobs while others have been senior managers traveling globally. There are people with degrees that have become obsolete in a world that values fast changing technology-based occupations. Many of these people have “played the game.” They bought homes that would always increase in value except, after 2008, when they didn’t. Investors in retirement plans that further invested contributions in companies that went bankrupt. When they work, they are now temporary workers. During the 2008 crisis people in my apartment complex in Bangkok came to me with reports of declining municipal bond earnings as some municipalities went bankrupt. Those in our retirement community had decided to live our post-working career lives in a low cost of living foreign countries but the low cost of living does not mean NO cost of living. The point here is most people described in this book planned for a pleasant life in their “golden years.” For most of them, it was not happening. They had been forced into virtual slave labor with below minimum wage jobs that come with no benefits.A solution offered in this novel is to live minimalist. Severely minimalist. Living in an RV or mobile home is almost a luxury for many of this population who opt instead for smaller vans or “normal” sized cars and even compact cars. They inhabit campgrounds set up for a traveling population when they can afford it, or they do “stealth” camping when they can’t. This may be one of the few books where people have a lot of good things to say about Walmart. This population is mobile, traveling to where the temporary work is and putting up with conditions they would never have accepted in their younger employable years. There is not much use joining in a class action suit against clearly legally indefensible employer actions. Given the speed of courts with associated appeal remedies, the class would disappear by the time final judgments are rendered.There is another story which the author just drifts into. It is logical and Bruder doesn’t explicitly say she is planning to do this, but she decides to become one with the itinerant population. She will, for a time, pursue a minimalist lifestyle. Readers will immediately see the contrast between her and the travelers. She can “opt out” at any time and return to a more mainstream existence. When will she decide to do this? The answer will hold a reader’s attention.There are philosophical digressions about the morality of economic decisions made and sometimes forced, decisions made by people Bruder describes and decisions made by employers who temporarily employ them. This is not a book of unsupported opinions. Bruder’s “Notes” section contains two hundred forty-eight references supporting claims made in each of her chapters.This is a story of survivors in a world of harsh economic realities. As a member of this group, I found my solution was to live outside the US, but my decision was easy. US Army training led to an appreciation of how to survive abroad. A retirement income insufficient to support “the good life” in the US supports a comfortable life abroad. But my solution is not for everyone. US citizens who have paid their dues, many of them through high taxes, should neither be forced to leave the country (NB: I was not forced) nor should they be forced to live with conditions depicted in this novel.I gave this a five-star Amazon rating despite the not always kind description of Amazon working conditions. I am rating the book, not Amazon. I highly recommend this book to readers planning for their own retirement. It comes down to the advice: “Don’t believe anyone. Think for yourself.” I was so impressed by this book that I bought it at the full price of USD 9.32 after hearing an Audible sample. Then I downloaded the Audible companion because I wanted to continue hearing the book at work. I am sure my employer will welcome my further retirement. For this book, there was no KU option. No reading for free. Sometimes you just spend the money.

I lived in Saudi Arabia over the period of a quarter century. Reliable statistics are notoriously hard to come by. More so, if they are from the government, which has problems resisting “spin.” Therefore, it was my own observations that lead me to conclude that approximately 20% of the population in Saudi Arabia was nomadic when I arrived in 1978. By 2003, when I left, the number had dropped to considerably under 1%. The black tents, made from goat hair, had disappeared from the landscape. One bedu, who hosted me for one night in 1984, had become the night watchman at a government clinic in Yabrin, by 2002. I asked him about his camels, sheep and goats. Yes, he still had them, but the Sudanese now herded them. Ah, immigrant labor! The Saudi government’s policy was to settle the bedu. They did not meet much resistance from the inheritors of a way of life that had existed for thousands of years. Sure, the painting of bedu around the campfire, swapping stories, can appear “romantic.” One summer of living in daily heat of 120 F would dissuade the most hard-core romantic; as one bedu bluntly told me: the bedu life is “mush quais” (not good).I found Jessica Bruder’s book, published in 2017, most informative on the resurgence of a “bedu lifestyle” in America, of all places. I found the parallels and the differences with Saudi Arabia fascinating. Sure, there may be a very small percentage of American nomads who are in control of their lives and have simply decided to opt out of the consumer society. But the vast majority, as Bruder makes clear, have been compelled to give up their fixed homes, that the Saudi bedu truly sought, due to the economic circumstance of the Americans, many of whom had “played by all the rules.” Many were on the road because they had “drunk the Kool-Aid” of always rising housing prices, and in 2008-09, watched the government bail out the bankers, who had caused the problem, but not the homeowners. Many others were there due to medical bills they could not pay and the subsequent bankruptcy. Others due to downsizing and ageism. Divorces, of course. More than half the American nomads are woman, in the 50’s and beyond.Bruder takes us to their gatherings. A big one takes place every winter, at Quartzsite Arizona, just off I-10, near the California line. Much camaraderie, but even there exists a snobbish pecking order among the RV’s. Bruder is a journalist who has decided that the best way to truly understand the story, and differentiate herself from the “parachute journalists” who’d come by for a couple days, was to join the American nomads, with her own vehicle, as well as to work as they did.Aside from sponging off relatives and a paltry social security check, what did the nomads do to replenish their bank accounts? Two mainstays were to work as campground managers for private contractors to the US Forest Service and Amazon warehouses. In fact, the later actively recruits these nomads for fulfilling “seasonal demands.” Bruder does the long nightshifts at Amazon, the repetitive motions with the bar scanner, and glimpses the future: the robots that Amazon is now “employing” to fulfill the orders. The author also goes to the beet harvest in the Red River valley, northern North Dakota and Minnesota, commencing in October. Not much romanticism in all this, as any Saudi Bedu could tell you.As one of her “sidebars,” Bruder gives us a glimpse of how life once was, as exemplified by the company town of US Gypsum, manufacture of sheetrock used in construction. The town, now ghost town, is Empire, Nevada, a “good” company town in which the workers were well-cared for, had decent homes, in exchange for their labor at a remote location. Any expat who worked at Aramco or King Faisal Specialist Hospital would have recognized Empire.Back at her home in Brooklyn, her eyes now opened to the reality of a new social trend in America, Bruder sees those who live in vans in the most urban part of America.The chief rap that I have against this book is the standard flaw of a book written by a journalist. There is always this “cut and paste” quality to it, since the material is often drawn from prior articles. Naturally there are redundancies and lacunae. I felt particularly sad reading about Linda May, age 66, and her hopes for building an “earth ship,” like there are near Taos, New Mexico, on some newly acquired desert scrub in Arizona, near the Mexican border, where May’s prospective future neighbor carries an AR-15 because of all the drug runners. I think Bruder should have been more skeptical about the prospects for success, in an area that has the detritus from previous tries. Overall, 4-stars.

I just bought this book, so perhaps I should wait until I've read it. I'm also from rural Canada, so perhaps things are different here. Living out of a RV or car seems like an expensive way to live to me. Vehicles always need repair, and until the pandemic, gas was relatively expensive. Is there not geared to income rent opportunities in the States? Not that being poor in your twilight years is easy in Canada. My Father worked as an auto mechanic all his life and had little to show for it when he was deemed obsolete before he was 65, but he was able to keep his small but well maintained house. I can't wait to sink my teeth into this book. I'll write a review when I'm done. The one star was just so I could post.I have now finished the book and I must admit that it really kept me reading. I enjoyed it very much. It seems like an awfully hard way to live. I new a boy in our neighborhood who was a petty thieve and I always thought that if he put as much work and effort into a job as he did hiding and disposing of stolen goods he'd be better off. I don't think that its the nomads that are at fault but it seems like living on the road takes as much upkeep and work as maintaining a place. I realize there is a certain freedom in not having a mortgage you are no longer able to pay. It's just that it seems one does whatever one has to, given the resources that one has, but there is no easy ride.

Muy buen libro en el que se basa la película que oscarizó a Frances Macdormand. Muy recomendable

Eindrucksvoller, authentischer, bewegender Film auf der Basis eines eindrucksvollen Buches.

ho trovato il libro molto più interessante del film che ne è stato ricavato, nel film il continuo spostarsi di questi nuovi nomadi migranti interni assumeva connotazioni "romantiche", una scelta di vita "on the road", mentre dal libro si capisce come questa sia molto spesso non una "scelta", ma un modo per sopravvivere alla crisi finanziaria ed economica dell'inizio di questo secolo: sono persone anziane, di 70 anni e più, che hanno perso tutto con fondi di pensione privati, che hanno perso il lavoro e non possono permettersi di pagare le rate del mutuo, che non hanno più un soldo, vendono tutto ciò che hanno e comperano un veicolo dove vivere, spostandosi, seguendo lavori stagionali. Il loro principale datore di lavoro è Amazon, che li preferisce ai giovani, in quanto questi ultra settantenni hanno un' "etica del lavoro". e lavorano sodo. leggetelo, è un ritratto fedele dell' America che non immaginiamo.

Il y a ceux qui rêvent de vivre libres et ceux qui vivent libres. Parfois à leur corps défendant. Victimes d'un accident économique ou d'un licenciement, ils se retrouvent la soixantaine venue à déplacer des colis dans les hangars interminables d'Amazon. En attendant de retrouver en fin de journée leur caravane, leur seule possession terrestre. Et certains le vivent bien.Cet ode au nomadisme émane d'une journaliste exacte, pointilleuse qui ne cherche pas à nous "vendre" les charmes d'une existence minimaliste