Bingo: On the Road; Passport: USA
Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland documents several years of immersion into the subculture of vandwellers, people who call themselves houseless rather than homeless, living in their vehicles and moving between seasonal jobs such as camp hosting in national parks, Amazon’s Camperforce, and harvesting crops.
The narrative follows a number of members and leaders of the vandweller community, but the focus character is Linda May who lives with her dog Coco in a 1974 ten-foot trailer towed behind a Jeep. Like most of the nomad community, Linda is white, grey-haired and “middle-class in mindset and appearance”. Linda’s two degrees, solid work ethic, gumption, and experience in construction weren’t enough to arrest her downward economic slide into low-paid insecure jobs. As wages and housing costs continued to diverge, van life became the only feasible option.
I haven’t seen the movie based on the book, but I have read criticism of its rose-coloured glasses and lack of economic context for life on the road. While this book lovingly depicts the camaraderie and freedom of the nomad life, it is all about the bigger picture. Bruder unpacks how two legs of the “sturdy tripod … of Social Security, private pensions and … assets and investments” have been kicked out from under so many older Americans. With economic risk transferred from institutions to individuals, the dream of a middle-class life with a secure retirement has shifted from difficult to impossible for too many.
Bruder’s narrative looks past the relentless optimism of Linda and so many of her fellow vandwellers to a bleak future. What comes next, after their aging bodies can no longer handle the backbreaking work, even with the free vending machine painkillers supplied by Amazon to dull the aches of walking up to eighteen miles a day on concrete to fulfill orders? What will be the impact of the relentless push to criminalise homelessness, even for those who shum that term for themselves?
Bruder leaves Linda with an ending that she says she is happy with, but the ratcheting down of her standards and the precarity of her dream of a place to call home are clear.