John Bowe, (born 1964 in

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

) is an American author and speech expert. He has written for ''

The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. The magazi ...

,'' ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'', '' GQ'', ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is a progressive American monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper ...

'', ''

McSweeney's McSweeney's Publishing is an American nonprofit publishing house founded by Dave Eggers in 1998 and headquartered in San Francisco. The executive director is Amanda Uhle. McSweeney's first publication was the literary journal'' Timothy McSw ...

'', and ''

This American Life ''This American Life'' is a weekly hour-long American radio program produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media and hosted by Ira Glass. It is broadcast on numerous public radio stations in the United States and internationally, and is ...

''. His work has been featured and reviewed in the ''

Harvard Business Review ''Harvard Business Review'' (''HBR'') is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a not-for-profit, independent corporation that is an affiliate of Harvard Business School. ''HBR'' is published six times a year ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', and he has appeared on ''

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

'', ''

The Daily Show ''The Daily Show'' is an American late-night talk show, late-night talk and news satire television program. It airs each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central in the United States, with extended episodes released shortly after on Paramount+ ...

'', with Jon Stewart, the ''

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

'', and many others. He is the co-editor of ''GIG: Americans Talk About Their Jobs'' (with Sabin Streeter and Marisa Bowe); author of ''Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy,'' editor of ''US: Americans Talk About Love,'' and author of ''I Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in an Age of Disconnection.'' He co-wrote the screenplay for the film ''

Basquiat Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the neo-expressionism movement. Basquiat first achieved notoriety in the late 1970s as part of the graffiti ...

'' with

Julian Schnabel Julian Schnabel (born October 26, 1951) is an American painter and filmmaker. In the 1980s, he received international attention for his "plate paintings"—with broken ceramic plates set onto large-scale paintings. Since the 1990s, he has been a ...

Early life and education

He graduated from Minneapolis' Blake School in 1982, obtained a BA in English (with honors) from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

in 1987 and earned an MFA in film from the

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

School of the Arts in 1996.

Works

''GIG''

''GIG: Americans Talk About Their Jobs'', co-edited with Marisa Bowe and Sabin Streeter, is an oral history based on

Studs Terkel Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American writer, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1985 for ''The Good War'' and is best remembered for his oral histor ...

’s '' Working'', offering a collection of 126 interviews from rich to poor, giving voice to the American labor force. Excerpted in the New Yorker magazine and rated one of the Best Business Books of 2000 by Harvard Business Review.

''Nobodies''

''Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy'' is an examination of modern

slavery Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...

in the United States, focusing particularly upon the widening gap between rich and poor, both in the US and globally, and what this means for notions of freedom and democracy. "Nobodies" began as an article published in 2003 for

. The book was published by Random House in September 2007. "Nobodies" follows Bowe's journey inside three illegal workplaces where foreign employees are enslaved, offering exclusive interviews and eyewitness accounts. The book exposes the corporate duplicity, subcontracting and immigration fraud, and moral sleights of hand that allow forced labor to continue in the United States. The book begins in the fields of

Immokalee, Florida Immokalee ( ) is an unincorporated area, unincorporated community and census-designated place in Collier County, Florida, United States. The population was 24,557 at the 2020 census, up from 24,154 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Collier Co ...

where underpaid or unpaid undocumented workers pick the produce that feeds the supply chains of companies such as Pepsi Company and Tropicana. Secondly, Bowe travels to

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa ( ) is the List of municipalities in Oklahoma, second-most-populous city in the U.S. state, state of Oklahoma, after Oklahoma City, and the List of United States cities by population, 48th-most-populous city in the United States. The po ...

, where the John Pickle Company exploited temporary workers imported from India to boost profits while making pressure tanks used by oil refineries and power plants. Lastly, in

Saipan Saipan () is the largest island and capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, an unincorporated Territories of the United States, territory of the United States in the western Pacific Ocean. According to 2020 estimates by the United States Cens ...

, a U.S. commonwealth, Bowe documents an economy built upon guest workers, where 90 percent of the female population work sixty-hour weeks for $3.05 an hour and spend weekends trying to trade sex for green cards. ''Nobodies'' was named one of the best twenty books of 2007 by ''

Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Ma ...

''. Bowe appeared on ''

'' on September 24, 2007 to talk about ''Nobodies''.

''US: Americans Talk About Love''

''US: Americans Talk About Love'' is a selection of oral histories about relationships. John Bowe collaborated with a team of interviewers and co-editors to record and collect the love stories of a diverse range of U.S citizens. The book has been translated into German, Polish, and Mandarin.

''I Have Something to Say''

''I Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in an Age of Disconnection'', Bowe discovers the lost art of speech training and immerses himself in a chapter of Toastmasters International to learn the meaning and value of "public speaking." Between lessons, he explores the roots of speech training and rhetoric in Ancient Greece and connects this once-universal component of education to modern problems of isolation, partisanship, and civic disengagement. I Have Something to Say is less a how-to manual than for rediscovering the importance of this basic building block of civil society.

Awards

John Bowe is a recipient of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award the Sydney Hillman Award for journalists, writers, and public figures who pursue social justice and public policy for the common good, the Richard J. Margolis Award, dedicated to journalism that combines social concern and humor, and the Harry Chapin Media Award for reportage of hunger- and poverty-related issues.

References

External links

Bowe's official webpageJohn Bowe's appearance on the Daily Show

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bowe, John 1964 births University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts alumni Columbia University School of the Arts alumni Living people American freelance journalists Writers from Minnesota