Nomadland: Looking at The Casualties of The Great Recession

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.

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, Jessica Bruder lived on the road for three years, observing closely and getting to know this new American workforce more intimately, as she wrote Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.

On Wednesday, May 1st at 6:30pm, join artist Pamela Talese and author Jessica Bruder as they discuss Bruder’s compelling, eye-opening tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one that foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us—and celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these quintessential Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive, on the occasion of its publication in France with les éditions du Globe.

In English. Free and open to the public. No RSVP necessary.