INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY CAROLINE CHERRY AVERITT AND ELANA ANN FAUTH
TRANSCRIBED BY CAROLINE CHERRY AVERITT
In April of 2026, Arkana had the opportunity to interview writer and journalist Alice Driver who visited the UCA campus as part of Arkatext. Driver is the author of three books: two works of literary journalism and one translation. She most recently published Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company (2024).
Arkana: What has life after Life and Death of the American Worker looked like? Do you keep in touch with the families you interviewed? Has there been any kind of response from the meatpacking industry?
Alice Driver: It was a really interesting experience because it was a very hard book to write, and I was definitely worried about Tyson, which is, you know, a multibillion dollar company with a strong legal arm. But I was really lucky to have the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic do a legal review of my book. I felt a lot better after having Cornell lawyers review my work. Then I also won a very big award from Harvard and Columbia before the book came out. Even though it was a financial award to support the book, for me it also felt good to have the approval of Harvard and Columbia for the work that I was doing. Tyson has said essentially that the book isn’t true–and they can say whatever they want, obviously–but it was definitely important for me to be respected in the journalism community and show that this investigative work was well done.
Beyond that, with the workers, by the time I finished the book many of the people in the book were dead or disabled. Almost nobody still works at Tyson because they’re on disability or for a variety of reasons related to safety and health. It’s hard to work longterm in that industry. But I have kept in touch with Venceremos, the organization that supports workers.
A lot of people, filmmakers, and writers have read my book and reached out to me. They want to either make a documentary or come to Arkansas. A lot of people wanted my contacts. That’s a little bit delicate. You have to build trust and all those things. So I have kept in touch to some degree, but to another degree, not with everybody.
Now I live in Arizona, so that’s another thing. I’m working as an investigative journalist there, so I’m not covering meat packing anymore. And I’m not in Arkansas. I have kept in touch, but now I’m covering other topics in Arizona.
Arkana: How do you think this story was shaped by your own experiences as an Arkansan? Did you see the state in a different light after writing it?
Driver: I think of myself as a nature writer, and I think of this book as a nature writing book because I really tried to include Arkansas in it. Like from the way I grew up in the Ozarks, especially with snakes, which I’ve always loved. It’s just such a part of my childhood growing up with copperheads and rattlesnakes and water moccasins. I think it’s kind of hilarious that every time I go home (because my parents live on the Little Mulberry River, and I’ll take friends to visit) I’ll be like “watch out because there might be a water moccasin,” and there’s always a water moccasin in the water. There’s always one. So I wanted that. I wanted to mark the seasons, and even though this is an investigation of what it’s like to work in chicken processing, it’s also very much about how I grew up here, and even my family history, my parents growing their own food and thinking about food systems. So I tried to bring all of that into the book.
Arkana: You conducted a lot of the interviews in Spanish and then translated them into English. How did you approach translation in a journalistic way of preserving the context and accuracy? Did you ever worry about translation impacting the credibility of the interviews?
Driver: Translation is an art, I think, and my entire career is based on translation. I’ve always worked in Spanish. I was based in Mexico for almost a decade, and part of my love of writing and language was falling in love with Spanish. I do my interviews in Spanish. I often am translating myself back into English. Translation is an art because if you do something in a literal translation, it’s not going to make sense. So I really see it as a literary act, and just a part of what I have always done as a writer.
Arkana: What made you choose the title “Life and Death of the American Worker?” Did you have any other options that mentioned Tyson or immigrant populations?
Driver: If you know the publishing world or even the magazine world, you don’t choose the title. You sell a book on a proposal, and the proposal title was “Absence Is a Silent Pain,” which became a book chapter title. It’s a quote from the tombstone of one of the Tyson workers who died of COVID. It was a quote that his wife put on his tombstone in Spanish, and I translated it into English. I thought it was really poetic, but the marketing team at Simon and Schuster said, “No one’s going to know what this book is about.” So they gave me a bunch of options. I can’t remember them all, but they gave me like 10 or 15 options, and we played around with it. But a title is definitely a negotiation with the marketing department.
Arkana: What were some of your ethical dilemmas while reporting this story?
Driver: In any long-term project working with people, everything is an ethical dilemma. And I think part of this kind of work is an act of faith. In this case, Tyson workers are very vulnerable in different ways, whether it be financially or in terms of being undocumented or having COVID or caring for people who are sick. I was dealing with people in very difficult situations, and so sometimes people would disappear. They would talk to me, then they wouldn’t talk to me for months. There’s no handbook for these kinds of situations. My first job is to protect the people that I’m writing about and to do it in the most human way possible. They were trusting me, trusting that I was not going to share their identities. It was just a daily act of trust in making sure you treat people in a way that builds that trust.
One of the workers in my book, she stopped talking to me for a few months and then she reappeared and she said she’d been depressed. It’s like, oh, that makes sense. I think so many times, especially with this kind of work, you can’t take anything personally. It has nothing to do with me. Life is really complicated.
Arkana: What can people do to help continue the work that you started with Life and Death of the American Worker? How would you suggest we help speak out against these inhumane practices?
Driver: I always tell students and people I talk to that everything begins at the community level. Even what I wrote about, Venceremos, which is an Arkansas-based organization run by workers who work in chicken processing. When I came across Venceremos, I was like, this is incredible. This is powerful. This is local work, and I want to highlight this.
I think: what can you do from where you are in your community, whether that be volunteering, or something else? I’ve always volunteered as a translator. Through translating different things, I’ve learned a lot about workers. I’ve volunteered at health clinics, and I’ve learned about topics I’ve eventually written about. I always tell people to just begin locally. What are your interests? I’m interested in translation, so I’ve worked as an interpreter. If you’re interested in other things, volunteer your time in other ways.
There’re a lot of immigrant organizations in Arkansas. Be interested in the lives of these people who are living here and producing most of the food. Not just here, but in the United States.
Arkana: Since we are an MFA-run literary magazine, many emerging writers read what we publish. Do you have any advice for emerging literary journalists? How do you keep yourself grounded, and take care of yourself while immersing in such difficult worlds, and learning about these injustices and hardships?
Driver: I always get really obsessed with things, so when I was writing about Tyson, I was also asking people “send me all the poetry you know of about meat,” or “send me all the art history about meat.” Some people are like, “your work must have been so hard,” and it was hard, but it was also fascinating. I really got to dive into this one area of research.
I’m grounded by knowing what I’m interested in, and I like to read really widely. I’m also very focused on centering the people that I’m writing about, and to do that, you have to spend time with people, which I think is the thing least likely to happen in journalism these days. So much of journalism now is sitting in an office. I think even the Arkansas Times was investing in AI when I left. You can really distinguish yourself by actually spending time with people and going out and doing things in real life. Which doesn’t seem like crazy advice, but it’s not something that’s happening that much anymore.
Arkana: What’s next for you?
Driver: Arizona’s State University got an $5.7 million grant to start a local news organization that is focused on investigations. I was the first hire, and we are investigating K-12 education. My first article is about 3D printed weapons in elementary schools, with kids as young as fifth grade printing weapons. It’s been super interesting because it takes time changing states, but I tend to think I can apply my skills anywhere. It’s just figuring out what I want to do, and I found some really interesting issues to investigate there.