Author Interview: Chris Arnade

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2019

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In an effort to rethink the conversation around poverty, author Chris Arnade’s new book, ‘Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America’, pushes aside decades of academic detachment, instead encouraging those who have been left out of prosperity to describe their own experiences. This week, Chris joins Goldy for a wide-ranging conversation about poverty, addiction, and inequality. Chris Arnade is a writer and photographer covering addiction and poverty in America. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and the Washington Post, among many others. Twitter: @Chris_arnade Further reading: Our forgotten towns: struggle, resilience, love and respect in ‘back-row America’: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/05/america-dignity-chris-arnade-book-extract-poverty Dignity on IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780525534730

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Pitchfork listeners Goldie here, you know we read a lot of books in preparation for the
0:11.0	podcast and sometimes these books just stand out in a way that
0:14.5	they deserve their own standalone episode. So this week I had a conversation
0:21.1	with Chris Arnoti who is the author of Dignity, seeking respect in
0:26.2	Back Row America, which chronicles his exploration of poverty in America face to face meeting up with people in cities and towns
0:36.9	across the country. It's a beautiful book that paints an intimate picture of
0:40.9	poverty in America through pictures and words and I urge you all to pick up a copy.
0:47.0	Hi Chris, this is David Goldstein. Thanks for joining us. I was going to say I really
0:56.0	enjoyed your book. It's not enjoyable in many ways because it's it's such a bleak picture sometimes.
1:05.0	Yeah, I mean it's one of those things where it's the like buttons doesn't really capture it necessarily.
1:13.0	Yeah, so if we could just start by having you say your name, describe who you are, and of course plug your book.
1:22.0	I'm Chris Arnottie. I'm a writer and photographer. I spent the last I guess wow
1:26.3	seven years driving around the United States talking to what I call back row Americans people
1:32.4	who generally don't get interviewed a lot all across the states.
1:36.0	I put 200,000 miles on my car doing that and focusing on their reviews on many things addiction poverty community and what I found over
1:47.4	those five years and seven years of interviewing people is what I call this basically
1:51.9	a title of my book, Dignity. I found that by going to towns that people told me not to go to, that are stigmatized as places that are not worth living in. I found a lot of frustration, but I also found a lot of
2:08.0	people striving to maintain the title of my book, Dignity. And I think it's clear from the book why you titled the dignity, the subtitle if you could
2:18.7	elaborate on, you say Seeking Respect and back row America.
2:23.7	Why the choice of words back row?
2:26.1	Well, one of the things that I found during my time
2:30.5	out doing this project was I felt like the largest division I was seeing in the country,
	...

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