April: I’m here with Frank Barry, author of Back Roads and Better Angels: A Journey into the Heart of American Democracy. And, Frank, thanks for saying yes to sitting down with me! Will you describe the book project?
Frank: Sure! The book explores what holds us together as a country. There’s been so much written and so much spoken about what divides us that I wanted to go explore what holds us together.
And so I stumbled across this thing called the Lincoln Highway, which runs right through South Bend, and it is the nation’s first transcontinental road. It connects the two coasts, New York to San Francisco. And so I traveled across it in a Winnebago with my wife in 2020. We left on 9/11 and we got to San Francisco by election day. And all along the way we talked with people and asked them that question: What holds us together as Americans?
April : All right! And, of course, Lincoln Way East and West is on the Lincoln Highway. I’d never thought about that until you interviewed me.
Frank: Yes!
April: So, my experience of being interviewed — I felt very honored. You’re a good listener.
Frank: You were a good interview. [laughter]
April: And I just appreciated, more than I think I ever had, the responsibility of listening to other people’s stories, and taking care of them. Because of course you represented sometimes very long interviews in a short spot in your book. So I wondered if you could just talk about that responsibility and the value of those personal stories.
Frank: Yeah, well, I felt a great deal of responsibility to the people who were generous enough with their time to speak with me. I wanted to make sure that I did justice to them. I was only going to be able to capture a tiny snippet of their story in the book but I wanted to make sure that it reflected who they were. And so, this was not a book of “gotcha” questions, and trying to trip people up. It was just the opposite — trying to speak with people who had interesting stories to tell and to try to share their stories with readers.
April: And you purposely spoke with people who were bridging divides on some divisive topics. So, maybe you could say what some of those topics were.
Frank: Yeah, so for instance we spoke about abortion here in South Bend, but we talked a lot about immigration, as well. I spoke with a sheriff on the Southern border about the work that he was doing there. We spoke about voting, which has become a very divisive issue. We spoke about climate change. We happened to run into wildfires while we were in Colorado. And I happened to be speaking with someone who runs an energy institute at Colorado State University that day, and so it was a perfect time to be talking about climate change.
So, we tried to talk about all of these national issues, but from a local perspective. I was asking people for their own personal and local perspectives on these big national issues.
April: Yeah, I appreciate that. So, if you were going to give some advice to people who might want to try bridging divides, what conversational opener or advice would you give?
Frank: Well, so I never asked anyone who they were voting for in the election. So, a good thing to do is to steer clear of national politics, at least in the beginning, and ask people about themselves. Ask them to share a little bit about where they’re from, and their story, and work they do. And, people tend to like to talk about themselves. [Laughter] Also, people have stories about themselves. And so, the more that you can begin to establish a relationship, then you can begin to establish a little trust, and then when the conversation inevitably drifts into politics, as it typically does, at least you’ve got something of a foundation to speak to people.
April: Yeah, and that was one of your questions, right? What holds us together? And what kinds of things did people say?
Frank: Well, people said the Constitution, they said our love of freedom, they said love of neighbors, they said our aspirations. And I think all of that is true. But as we were traveling across the country, eventually something else became true, too, because after the election, when Donald Trump did not concede the election, it became clear that accepting the election is also a crucial part of what holds us together as Americans.
April: Yeah. Timely.
Frank: Timely.
April: So, I sure appreciate the time to sit down and talk with you. I’m a tiny part of a very big and ambitious book that I invite people to read. I think now is a good time to practice doing that work. So: Thanks for joining me!
Frank: Thanks for having me!
Music: "This Land is Your Land" by Chicano Batman