Audio Review: Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

From the beet fields of North Dakota to the wilderness campgrounds of California to an Amazon warehouse in Texas, people who once might have kicked back to enjoy their sunset years are hard at work. Underwater on mortgages or finding that Social Security comes up short, they're hitting the road in astonishing numbers, forming a new community of nomads: RV and van-dwelling migrant laborers, or "workampers." Building on her groundbreaking Harper's cover story, "The End of Retirement," which brought attention to these formerly settled members of the middle class, Jessica Bruder follows one such RVer, Linda, between physically taxing seasonal jobs and reunions of her new van-dweller family, or "vanily." Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of both the economy's dark underbelly and the extraordinary resilience, creativity, and hope of these hardworking, quintessential Americans?many of them single women?who have traded rootedness for the dream of a better life.

Have you ever wondered how people who do seasonal work make enough to live on? Especially in the off-season? Well, I did. It seems that needs some serious repaire0 percent of the Deaf people I knew in high school work for Amazon. And ice, I did the math to figure all living expenses worded how the hell did they survive on such a small amount? I tried asking various people, but they always said they only have the basics for living… Well, so do I, or I thought I did. I honestly believed that I was living cheaply, but as it turned out, my idea of cheap was not cheap I all.

Then I saw this book on Scribd… I downloaded the audio, sat back, and listened to the narrator Karen White as she tells of the experiences of Jessica Bruder living a nomadic life (kind of) and how people live.

The most surprising part of the whole thing was that they lived in an RV or rather a beat-up RV that may have been new in 2009, but today was just a beat-up rusting, beaten down, trash heap of RVs. I have family members that have the more recent models, and It is NOT my first choice of a permeant living arrangement. To think that people live in old ones, broken down ones send not good chills down my spine.

To read about Amazon and their warehouses and slave labor practices, I become mad all over again. I am Deaf and went to a Deaf school, and I know what it is like trying to find a way to live and have money to eat and all the things at the bottom of the economic totem pole is well tricky. If you get a check every month, it is only a fraction of what you need. Anyway, the people I know would instead prefer to work. The people I know who have worked in an Amazon Warehouse have the same back-breaking story about what Amazon expects employees to do in a shift that Amazon requires. Like the walking all over to get an object, no real break, and let us not forget the various injuries that occur yet it goes unreported, and thus all people get bonuses. I bet I wouldn’t even last a day. I am one of those who claims cleaning is out of my zone of genius, so I “outsource” it. I am impressed that Jessica Bruder made it as long as she did. The first time someone told me to walk more than 100 yards with a box, I would have quit. The RV dwellers all stick it out primarily out of sheer necessity, and I am guessing pride as well.

In the end, we, the consumers of the Amazon network, keep punching items from Amazon even if Amazon is the perfect show of the things we despise in a company. At the same time, Amazon might be many things. Still, the option of having everything brought to our front door within 48 hours ( if you are a prime member) only continues to reinforce the idea that work such as in an Amazon warehouse is a choice and not a necessity. Nomadland is the perfect book that brings to light the side of retirement and labor that we otherwise choose to claim no knowledge about. When we read Nomadland, we will have to face up to if we want to convince OR do we want to go with a more sustainable option that treats, workers like people and not as an extension of a piece of machinery.