Dan Barry at Words Bookstore (Abigail Baker)
Maplewood resident and New York Times columnist and reporter Dan Barry was at Words Bookstore on Wednesday to read from and sign copies of his latest book, The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland, the true story of thirty-two men with developmental disabilities, who were exploited by a turkey processing plant in Iowa for 35 years.
The book has received rave reviews. The crowd of roughly 40 people was enthusiastic, and several people asked questions at the end, ranging from whether the men know of Barry’s book to how the author chose to structure the work.
Words Bookstore has an emphasis on creating a friendly environment for those with developmental disabilities and their families. Owner Jonah Zimiles added that Barry is an especially welcome guest, being “a Maplewoodian, who is a stupendous author, who has written a book about developmental disabilities.”
Boys in the Bunkhouse tells the story of how, for sixty-five dollars per month beginning in 1974, the men hanged live turkeys upside-down and eviscerated the turkeys. The work was long and strenuous, and over the years, the conditions of the bunkhouse where the men were housed declined. Overseers withheld television and snacks from the men for perceived infractions. Said Barry, “Finally, everyone is old, and their entire adult lives have been spent this way, with occasional camping trips or trips to Walmart.”
Barry, whose New York Times column “This Land” takes him throughout the country, was researching a possible reporting trip to Iowa when he found a short news article describing a $240 million dollar lawsuit involving the exploitation of thirty-two developmentally disabled men. Said Barry to The Village Green before the event, “The top of my head exploded. I pursued it from there. I said, ‘I’ve got to interview these guys.’ I didn’t want to write around them. I wanted them to be part of their own narrative.”
The workers were mostly willing to share their stories with Barry, though some were more open than others. Barry read aloud an excerpt on the early life of one of the men, Willy Levi, known as the “turkey whisperer,” earning the nickname through his knack for calming the turkeys. The workers were originally housed in state schools in Texas; many were dropped off and never saw their families again. When a new initiative emerged in Texas, enforcing that those in state schools would need to learn a skill, these thirty-two workers were taught to eviscerate turkeys and then sent to the turkey processing plant in Iowa.
Years later, one of the worker’s relatives inquired as to how much money her family member possessed; the amount was $86. This caused the first real stirrings of a lawsuit. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued on behalf of the workers, and in 2013, a jury awarded $240 million to the thirty-two workers, though federal caps on jury awards meant millions fewer were actually distributed. The verdict was, Barry said to the rapt crowd at Words, “really a cry of the heart from Iowa expressing outrage….No matter what they get it’s certainly not sufficient for the amount they went through and the work they did.”
Barry told The Village Green there is a “continuing sense of otherness that goes back” regarding treatment of those with developmental disabilities. Furthermore, the workers became members of the community and frequently interacted with residents of the town, yet no one noticed or acted on their working conditions. Barry said, “I think another lesson is that we are in fact our brother’s and sister’s keepers and we have to be vigilant about protecting the vulnerable, and we have to notice.”
