Real people.
An unprecedented time.
From September 2020 through September 2021, Michelle Fishburne traveled all over the U.S., interviewing hundreds of people about their lives during the pandemic. Excerpts of 100 of these interviews became the award-winning book Who We Are Now: Stories of What Americans Lost and Found During the COVID-19 Pandemic, published by UNC Press.
AMERICA, IN ITS OWN WORDS
From a college student who found unexpected fame on TikTok to a special-education teacher navigating remote learning, every story is different.
What Americans lost.
What they found.
Michelle Fishburne did something few people were doing during the first year of COVID-19: she traveled 12,000 miles across the United States in a motorhome and sat down face to face with hundreds of people.
They shared what their lives were like, what made them struggle, and what surprised them. Some lost jobs. Others lost family, friends, health, or a sense of certainty. And amid the upheaval, some found things that had eluded them before the pandemic.
Together, their stories capture what Americans lost and found during an extraordinary year.
These first-person accounts preserve what it felt like at the beginning of COVID-19, when employment was uncertain, schools were online, and American life was more unpredictable than ever before.
RECORDED IN REAL TIME
EXPLORE THE STORIES
Excerpts from some of the original interviews are available at whowearenow.us, the legacy site from that project. Excerpts from 100 interviews appear in the book Who We Are Now.
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On the road during the 2020-2021 journey.