is nlihc.org you can become involved in our work on covid-19, housing and homelessness and beyond. thank you all so much for joining us. thanks again doctor ãbtake care, stay healthy, and goodbye for now. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> hi everyone, welcome to this the final virtual event for the online edition of the paper plant literally for festival. i'm here with marie mockett author of "american harvest" will return to the book anne-marie in a moment. i just have a couple

announcements to make. my name is danny kane and the owner of the bookstore where i'm sitting right now. i'm the director of the paper plane area festival. we appreciate you being here with us today. it would be perhaps more fun if we were all together on a beautiful sunny day but we appreciate this regardless and plan to be back and stronger than ever in 2021. we had a great series of online events they are all archived and available for replay. a couple other things about how this is going to work. marie is going to give a short author talk and show photos about her book then we will open it up to questions. you can ask questions by clicking that ask a question button at the bottom of your screen or typing into the chat window at the right hand side of your screen. we appreciate you asking questions to keep the discussion moving and we want

this to be participatory event as much as we can another thing to note at the bottom of the screen is says by american harvest will take you through the raven bookstore .com where we have plenty in stock to ship very quickly. or if you're in lawrence we can deliver it to your house tomorrow at noon for free. without further ado let's get to american harvest, which is a thoughtful and important look at the intersection of faith and landscape and agriculture in the heartland. these are all issues we are thinking about here in kansas. we are really excited to ãb putting this book together for marie mockett ãba memoir with the japanese say goodbye which is the final for the 10 open book award. she's written for the new york times, national geographic, glamour, posture and other publications and has been a

guest on the world talk of the nation and all things considered on npr. she's a core faculty member of the raneer writing workshop visiting writer in the mfa program at st. mary's college in moraga california. she lives in san francisco she is coming to us from the monterey peninsula and california today. please welcome marie mockett. >> thank you so much. thanks for having me. i'm so glad we get to meet even in this virtual space. is that for me? that's the clue for me to start my presentation i take it? >> yes. [laughter] >> i have a few, i will start with a few photos that i have come a little presentation around "american harvest" to explain what it is to you. the opening line is "this is the land of primary colors". here are some of the primary colors that i refer to in the book. these are a couple large

combines, most farmers i refer to as combines, people outside affirming often refer to them as turbine harvesters. this is a backdrop against which american harvest is set. to give you a little more historical background i live in california but my father side of the family my father is american, both sets of his grandparents emigrate to nebraska, this is my great grandfather percy who was actually born was english but born in spain and then came to the united states via camden new jersey and became the union pacific railroad doctor and moved to western nebraska and here he is driving his horse and buggy no doubt off to go help somebody who is six somewhere in the prairie.

i used to read these historical notes on how he became famous in that part of nebraska during the 1918 flu epidemic when he would hire people to drive him from homestead homestead as he would sleep and wake up and take care people who are ill. i used to think that story was amazing because origin so when my family has a tendency to drive as many hours as they can before stopping to sleep on the side of the road. now of course i think it's amazing because i realized he participated in trying to relieve some of the suffering during the past epidemic. that's made me sort of reflect on that story a little bit differently. both of my great grandparents purchased or were bartered on a

cliff notes version that led to vienna austria, my mother was from japan they both study opera got married in nebraska. here's my mother and her first ever christmas and they got married and had me.

that's a picture of my grandfather looking at it older combine machine. this is a newer machine, photo taken maybe three years ago. one of the biggest differences you might notice is how long the thing is on the front that's the header. the piece that actually cuts the wheat and then send the cut wheat heads to be thrashed and later the grain is separated from the head of the wheat and goes to the back of the combine. if the front part that's much larger. therefore more efficient at cutting the wheat. farmers like us every year eric

gets ready in lancaster county pennsylvania. he loads up his equipping on the back of semi trucks. this is a photo that was taken by a drone i think by the character in the book whose name is samuel. after loading up equipment like this eric and his crew driver about 1700 miles from lancaster county to texas where the

american wheat harvest begins. i have here a map for you that shows you what the journey looks like. the blue dotted line is the harvest journey that eric takes every year, cutting wheat for harvesters in each state and this is the route i followed that forms kind of the spine of the story of american harvest. in this map including a couple of other historic roots the green line shows historical cattle trails, the red line is the oregon trail route. of course the mormon trail route would be almost parallel to the oregon trail route and vacancy the union pacific railroad or the transcontinental railroad. you can see how the harvest route i took in 2017 intersects with a lot of famous roads to early american history so a lot of the details from the stories around those historical incidents also appear in american harvest.

once on the road the custom harvesters who live in trailers like this, the immovable campsite, the laundry hung out to dry, think somebody put the american flag up for this picture. i think it looks nice in the picture. every sunday we go to church, which was a new experience for me. there are a lot of conversations about religion in the book. cutting wheat in the middle of nowhere means sometimes things break down and miles from town. the guys who eric hires to work from him not only can drive the equipment but are very good at fixing it it's a very different way of life than my friends in

the city have where if a car breaks down you'd take it to a mechanic take it to a shop wait for some videos to fix it and then get the car back. that's not really the way it works on the farm. generally these guys try to fix themselves faster and cheaper and it's something every worries about with farming because you want to get the crop out right before it's destroyed by any of the natural elements. our journey meant we were exposed to many scenes of great beauties this is actually a picture i took last year in nebraska and it's one of those amazing great plains sunsets.

the wheat harvest start in early may. you can see how the route goes up to oklahoma and through western kansas and then nips into colorado and nebraska and then there is a long journey through wyoming and over to idaho. that is a little bit of the background for american harvest. i will come back to the virtual conversation. >> those photos are gorgeous. what a great way to have a document, not only with the book you written about the experience but also the gorgeous photos as well. it's really great to see those. we have a question from the audience which actually glanced at at the end of your talk. i'm wondering about the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on

these harvesters. the question is do you tell us what the harvesters are doing now in the crisis? have they been declared essential? business as usual for them or? >> i think it is business as usual for them. i saw a photo the other day they loaded up the first sets of equipment that have to move from pennsylvania to the staging area i think they actually set everything up first in oklahoma before taking it down to texas. the equipment is already on its way. yes it's business as usual. i had heard the last time i have spoken to eric i knew that every year he gets new guys who joined the crew who get a truck driving ãbi know the dmv has been closed since march in pennsylvania so i don't know what the update is on that but that's going to be affecting lots of harvesters. it also harvesters which use

international workers because so many americans go to college in september but harvest extends during september into october depending on how far people go. i haven't heard with the latest is for international workers. i think they're not able to get into the country this year. it already became more and more difficult when there's more paperwork. i wonder with church being such essential part of their life, that. >> i don't know if they'll continue to go to church maybe virtual church which they watch live stream over computer in a

trailer or or if they do some version of house church in a trailer i could imagine a scenario in which churches start to meet again in those states before they do in the coastal states. but it's good to be very interesting it's going to require more improvisation. >> here's another question from the audience. given the time and research there must be a lot that didn't make it into the book. what's the favorite detail that didn't make the final edit? >> there was a second pig hunting scene in texas. there is one where we have one pig hunting scene i've never been hunting before and wild pig is really big problem as

people who live in rural parts of america know. i was introduced to me and i go on a hunt. the second pig had: ãbpig hunt had been taken out and that was unfortunate because i was trying to capture that crazy adrenaline. i was trying to convey some of that expense. that doesn't make it in. there's so much history that this book intercepts with that i think we had to cut out a lot of it but they're still quite about history and the book. those things didn't make it in. there's also a visit i made to a farm actually in kansas which is where i had a rather ãbit didn't really fit in with the characters were front and center in america's heart so that got cut. there's a number of things the first chapter i wrote is really

long and we had to keep all of that material. >> this really interesting just thoughts on the writing process which is always as a writer might itself is it questioning always wanted. you written a novel in a memoir, now you've written "american harvest" which is nonfiction with somebody else as the main character.do you find, what are the differences in the writing process for you between the three different types of projects? >> it's so funny because i intended for this to be i intended for this very much to not be a book in which i appear as the character. i was really trying to say i'm going to take a step back and betray this world as i see it. the problem i ran into was that i couldn't fade into the background. i'm female and different looking enough that i kept

having experiences that interrupted what i thought the narrative was going to be. i thought the narrative was going to be me describing what the harvesters were doing so that people at home, by which i meant the city, could understand how it was that harvest happens. things kept interrupting the experience for me and those interruptions became more intense and by the time we went to idaho, the last place the story of the harvest takes place, we were camping on an indian reservation in the rv park of an indian reservation, harvesting wheat, it was owned by a new tribe but actually farmed by the son of the mormon settlers. it's really complicated piece of american history. and it's impossible to focus on harvesting the wheat because everywhere i went nate don't want people thought i was

native american. i couldn't pretend like this wasn't happening and i couldn't pretend like we were not on an indian reservation. all of that intruded on the narrative. a profoundly affected the shape of the story took. one of the things that happened was my editor read the first said he was a character initially appear on page 80 i said that's probably the time i realized i'm gonna have to be a character. we have to reinsert the presence in the beginning. that was an interesting experience. some ways it's not that different than the previous book. it strikes me as even i'm glad you became a character in the book because it would've been disingenuous to ignore all the things happening. it speaks to the issues of the urban and rural divide and identity and all kinds of interesting things that the book is dealing with. speaking of the rural urban divide. you see this as another

audience question. dc correlation current debate around covid-19 and the rural urban divide in america as an urban resident in a rural state and very interested in hearing what you have to say about this. i was actually thinking of this morning i had a childhood friend who lives outside of the city and and say the encrypted infection rate is incredibly low but it's not to help to reopen the united states for

business. i said that infection rate is lower than we thought it was to be because people have been sheltering in place. i feel like there's a huge, i feel it covid-19 has revealed that difference between the lifestyles in the ways that we work. there was a meme i saw the other day on facebook from someone living in the city. i'm going to point out how all new yorkers sat stayed home and midwest stormed their capitals waving guns saying reopen our state which of course is a gross over supplication of what's happened in the cities and the midwest. the kind of rhetoric which is unhelpful and may be sad.

i think this pandemic continues to highlight those. >> here in kansas two things that i think are relevant that are going on, one is the current hot spots in kansas are in dodge city and garden city is the meatpacking plant. couple large-scale meatpacking operations having a really hard time controlling their ãb containing the virus. there's really intense debate bouncing around in the courts about what churches can and cannot do. there is a church near lawrence that is really trying hard to keep this right to have services in person and there's all sorts of rhetoric between people within lawrence who tend to have more cosmopolitan and urban point of view and the people in the country where the

church is located. so it certainly is an interesting way. >> it's funny too, a few weeks ago i had this conversation with eric on the phone around food supply and we were talking about how covid-19 is impacted wheat farming and i wrote a piece which was published about a week or two weeks ago. in that conversation he said to me, the interesting thing to watch is meatpacking and meet facilities. this is weeks ago. as is often the case of conversations with him now i'm suddenly showing up in the news. somebody has a comment on meatpacking facilities in south dakota and iowa. i think also in nebraska around grand island, anywhere along the interstate 80 you can see how the viruses spreading and traveling across the united states and impacting bar houses and meatpacking facilities.

the other stories is there to be meat shortage. we will see. it's interesting because that will also reveal to us how dependent we are across the country on people who live far away from us. >> the very idea of who is essential has become such a political and loaded an important question. >> is it really coverage of who is essential which i understand, it was always medical people and medical personnel but it's not like farmers really set at home and sat on our homes for very long if at all because of course that is essential. >> here's an interesting question from the audience. was it hard to spend so much time with people who are so different from you or in what ways was it hard or not so hard. before you answer that just how long were you on the road with

the crew and camping alongside them. can you talk a little bit more about the process of the book and then answer the question about spending so much time with people who are different? >> i think i was on the road with the harvesters for about five months total from may to september. might have been a little bit shy of that. there were a couple times i had to leave and come back. to give you an understanding of how extraordinary the people are in the book, eric had purchased, i didn't understand this completely the first time he told me that he had purchased an additional trailer for a girl.there was a trailer that eric lives with his family had a trailer for the guys and he would say, i bought a new trailer for a girl because the character named bethany in the book was going to go along for harvest. he was also saying, you can stay in that trailer. before i really fully understood the implications of what that meant.

he was extraordinary and open and we had been having a number of conversations over the years about farming. he knew i lived in new york city but my family had this farm he knew my farm but he knows it still my farm ground better than i do. he was trying extremely hard to share his knowledge of agriculture and farming with me. not just wheat farming in nebraska but all kinds of farming. he took me to my first ãbi know you were talking to ãb earlier about to confirm she took me to my first layer firms, dairy farms, etc. in pennsylvania so i could start to get the whole picture of agriculture. then what happened was really in 2015 we were all, he was very nervous before the election, he remembered so many of his thoughts there was no way donald trump would win, eric had a lot of concerns he said i think it's possible he will win. and then trump did win and then

eric thought, one of the reasons this happened is because we have this gap in understanding the way our country works so that's when it was sort of the decision or invitation was put forward that i go along with harvest to start to develop an even more whole picture of what this urban and rural divide was. >> that is kind of the background to the book. as far as how difficult it was, it was only difficult in the sense that i didn't always understand what was happening, what i was seeing and what i was hearing but there's also the degree to which i would like being placed in a situation like that. it was challenging but i never it wasn't like an unwelcome to challenge because that's an environment i thrive in the kind of thing i like to do and those are the kinds of conversations that i generally like to have.

>> what was one of the biggest surprises to you that came out of this process of writing this book. >> one of the biggest surprises would be that i had to ask the question of what christianity was and was there anything i could understand about it that i had never understood before. and all of the conversations around that were surprising and wonderful to me. i would say that was one of the largest surprises. the other thing is i think my deeper understanding of american history surprised me then and continues to spread me now. somebody asked me the other day to interview what are some of the biggest lessons you learned and i said, well, i only recently thought of this, i understand why the founding fathers went so nuts when they discovered this continent. the united states has the ability to produce enough food to feed its population. the very few countries that can do that. you talk about food shortages

in the united states, it shows there are so many people lining up at food banks for food but we actually have the capacity to create enough calories for everyone to consume, which is extraordinary. my mother grew up in japan after the war where there was a number of years of starvation partly because japan had colonized korea and moved a lot of the farming off the main island of japan. one of the reasons why japan has such starvation because they simply couldn't produce enough food to feed their own population. the united states doesn't have to have that problem. it made me understand, among other things, you agree that we had initially when we saw the country because it would be extraordinary to have a landmass that can produce enough food for its people. that something i didn't understand to the degree that i

do now. it's not terribly comfortable but it's amazing. i think there's very few countries in europe that produce enough food for their own population and i don't think china produces enough calories to feed itself either. >> i suppose that's a surprise to me is as well i've never thought about that and i think you for bringing it up. it reminds me of this question from the audience about american history and he mentioned it briefly but to what extent is there an awareness of native american hit history among the people you spend time with? >> we did go into that a little bit in the book. different characters have different degrees of understanding the awareness of american history one of the most telling moment at the end of the book with the character emily says emma how long am i supposed to feel bad about the

history of the native americans in this country? i then have a series of other conversations, the answer is, reconciliation isn't about feeling bad but it's about being aware of what other people stories are. there's little ways towards the end of the book what you see different characters trying to infect demonstrate awareness that they might not have had before. some characters do not, change their behavior unnecessarily. demonstrate greater awareness to action. but that's a really dark and complicated and uncomfortable question and there are moments some of the darkest moments in the book happen around those questions. i had this comfort as a writer because i felt like wow this is not the story of native americans is not my story to tell. on the other hand, here we are living in an rv park on an indian reservation and i mistaken for native american to

the point i was invited to participate in events as though i was native american something i couldn't shy away from. but then hearing the way different characters live with that history, interpreted that history, understood that history became very uncomfortable. there's a point where i'm having a conversation with a woman who is native american who has adopted the mormon faith who then says, god took away our land because we were unrighteous. which was so distressing to me to hear. i realize this is a way in which land seizure has been justified and that it is an additive people continue to have and continue to wield against each other.

i know that and knew that but seeing how it impacted people and their sense of security and stability and happiness seeing that first hand was deeply distressing it makes me realize this is something that we still live with. i notice you're calling the people in the book characters, it's a nonfiction book. one of the characters is in the chat asking questions. it strikes me as very interesting but has any of them ãb [laughter] has anyone that you've written about in the book, have they read it? >> they have read it, yes. two of them have read it. >> how did it feel to know that? >> it had to be done, right? there's no way around it.

either the book got written or didn't get written and once it's written people read it or don't read it. it seemed to matter more that the book was written in the story was told and questions were asked then to remain silent. that's the job. >> i asked this because i'm curious. >> i can tell you off the record, not off the record because for the congressional wisdom with assorted project i was told this by my friends right nonfiction is the people who are in the book are called subjects and you get to know your subjects you write your book and then you sever connections with them. that's the way this project generally proceeds. that really wasn't going to work in this case. so i'm trying something different. >> good luck. >> it was important to me to be honest and say here are the

things i saw in the things that happened i was very aware very early on that there was conventional narratives i'd be expected to follow and it conventional attitudes and stances i would be expected to have. it was important to me that i not have that as i move forward and wrote the book. there's a sort of sneering way ãbthat was a good be appropriate. it's not actually my personality anyway i remember somebody saying to me, if you could write a book about the farm the correct thing is to go back and live on the farm. i said, well, most people from the city don't go back and live at the farm. that's not really what's happening in farming in america. even if you think that's what the story is supposed to be, that's actually not an accurate reflection of what's going on right now in the united states. we have an aging population of farmers and diminishing numbers

of ãbi don't know what can happen as a result of the pandemic but that wouldn't be realistic. it's so interesting how we think we know how the story is supposed to go. without even realizing it we carry that bias into how the story is told and it was really important to me that i not behave that way. >> how would you characterize your relationship to the land, tear farm? >> it's ever-changing. i think about it all the time. i'm not the person who knows how to fix the equipment when it breaks. that's what my father used to say to me. before this process of writing the book when we would talk about farming he would say to me, we have wonderful people on the farm the farm runs itself. then he would say, you can't farm commuter and how to fix anything. that was the number one skill

that was lacking. because i lived in the city and my response to things breaking is, i will call the expert who knows how to fix it. i will call the guy who knows how to fix my car, who knows how to fix the plumbing. and that's not the way most farmers live. most farmers live by the wonderful code of self-reliance which is let me try to fix it first. and i don't know how to fix things. by the same token, whenever i'm out with one of the guys who works for eric they will say to me, wow, i wish i had farmland. if i wanted to break into farming it would cost me a minimum of $700,000 so i think, i have this incredible privilege our family held onto its farm ground it would be very wasteful for me to just say, i don't really know how to farm so i shouldn't farm it. so i don't know what my relationship is to the land and what it is going to be. essentially i'm a landlord which is not particularly

attractive title. so i don't know. >> i would argue that using it as a launchpad into this wonderful thoughtful exploration of these issues and having it produce this book is worthwhile for sure, certainly a good use of the land. >> that's what i would like to do. if i weren't a writer i wouldn't be able to write the book. i did try to do comes something constructive with it. there's also part of me that says, i'll never know the land as well as the people who permit. and you are there physically. >> yeah. there's a question here from the audience, what connections you make about the landscape/people/talent of the areas you ãb

>> what connections do i make the same, i visited and written about japan i'm not sure quite about how that means? how do people relate to the land? what i think what the relationship between people and land and what i see in terms of the relationship between people and land in japan? i think i understand what the question means. i thought a lot about how the process of modernization. people use the term globalization a lot. i understand that term foot but i think a lot about the process of modern ãwhich overlaps with globalization but slightly different. we see the same processes, certainly before the pandemic you see the same process happening in countries that modernize people leave the

countryside they leave rural areas, they leave their agrarian jobs and moved to the city and that impacts traditional cultures and exacerbate certain tensions. i certainly saw that happen in japan the same way it happens in the united states. traditional folk religions are preserved in the countryside in the way that they are not in the cities. in japan. very very old traditions are preserved in japan and the way they are in the cities. a little bit different in the united states because of a younger country but you also still see that real urban tension i think in terms of people leaving a rural area to live in a city for nardil knowledge worker job and then have that exacerbate tensions. i thought a lot about i've had

these really moving experiences when i go to the places i used to go to in japan as a child i go to a temple that i went to as a kid and it's been taking care of by some rice farmer. there is no longer enough people in the town to take care of the temple because you have a green population and we see that happening in the great plains and some of the towns in the royal ãbrural communities. i'm not sure that quite with the question asked or meant but that's what initially comes to mind. >> it's interesting and thoughtful and well said. we will roll with it regardless of whether answer the question. >> ãb since sheltering in place have ordered a ton of bowls from the home in both company which i think is in lincoln nebraska. i planted them a couple weeks ago and patiently go out i

don't have faith in the process they just had a quick come out of the ground yet. i think they're really good farmer wouldn't do that. we schedule our lives and schedule our time there and can live by that. >> having spent so much time straddling and writing about the urban rural divide, do you see any way for a path forward for increased mutual understanding between the coasts in the middle? >> it's such a great question.

if i could come up with like three bullet points or pretend like i have three bullet points, i know that i could probably really make major media really happy but i think it's really hard and i resisted the temptation to say, here's all we need to do because that feels really disingenuous. ...... >> i think gets turned over and talked about. my hope is that in reading this book other people can say, wow, look at these conversations. maybe i can have them, too that's the a. part for the book. the b. part is i really hope we have a leader in november who doesn't exacerbate our differences, doesn't talk down

to farmers, who doesn't talk down to anybody but really loves the country and can speak to us in a way that is intelligent. that would be very helpful, i think. right now the problems are exacerbated by having a leader in place who likes to inflame the population and seems to thrive on people being riled up and being upset and that's not helpful. >> indeed. marie, thank you so much for joining us today. it was fascinating and wonderful and important. >> thanks, thank you so much for having me be part of the festival and i'm sad i wasn't there in person but i really appreciate that we get to be here like this and i hope people buy books and if it's not my book, as jeff said, i hope that people buy books from you.

>> ma rye's new book is american harvest: god, country and farming in he heartland. available now in a beautiful hard cover from gray wolf press. it's from the middle of the country. you can buy it by clicking on the button down there. we have plenty in stock. they'll fastly be delivered. thank you, thank you everybody and we'll see you next year in real life for paper planes. >> booktv continues on c-span2. television for serious readers. >> hello. good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for coming to this event. on behalf of the book store i'm gilbert i'll be your host. we're dag virtual event here with tim deroche