What I learned from Mark Bowden, the author of Blackhawk Down

Elicit scenes as if you were writing for film

Angelina Pacheco has worked in poultry processing for two decades. Photo by Liz Sanders.

“What are her hands doing? What gestures does she make?” asked Mark Bowden via Zoom. As a part of the Logan Nonfiction Program, I was paired with him as a mentor. I sent him writing from my forthcoming book, The Life and Death of the American Worker. Sharing unfinished work can feel like dumping a pile of dirty clothes in front of a stranger, and I was nervous. But he put me at ease by asking detailed questions about the poultry processing workers who I had written about.

The workers have jobs that range from cleaning feces off chicken feet to cutting chicken wings to mixing frozen blocks of blood and skin and chicken breasts to form chicken nuggets. Bowden asked me to show him the series of repetitive movements workers performed for specific jobs. While workers had told me about their jobs and I had imagined them, I realized I didn’t know the answer. I wasn’t allowed to enter poultry processing plants to see that kind of work firsthand.

Bowden suggested that I have workers perform their jobs for me. He told me, “Move away from what a worker is telling you, and using the details to recreate the scene.” It was a simple but revelatory suggestion. Bowden said, “Your work as a reporter is eliciting stories from people. Write down a description of them. How do they move?” Bowden told me how when he worked with director Ridley Scott, Scott would read the script and mark all explanations in red. Scott wanted to replace explanations with scenes that came alive with confrontation, loads of colorful descriptions, noises, and shouted comments. “Use everything,” said Bowden, who wanted me to describe workers rather than write about passively interviewing them.  

The week after our mentoring session, I drove three hours from Little Rock to Springdale to interview a poultry processing worker at his home. When I arrived, he was in his garage working on his truck. I asked him to show me how he cut chicken wings, a job he had held for a decade. He sat in a lawn chair facing the yard, his hands moving with force and precision, one holding the imaginary knife, the other gripping the chicken. He described how the chicken bodies came down the line on cones, noted how to grip them, and how swiftly to make the incision. If the downward incision to cut off the wing wasn’t forceful and precise, he could get hurt. I was mesmerized by his hands which moved as if they were a machine, a precision machine. The worker told me, “Next time you visit, buy several whole chickens at the grocery store. We can set the up in the yard and I’ll cut off their wings. That way you can see the whole process.”

When I buy those chickens, I will be thinking of Bowden and thanking him for reminding me to immerse myself in the work.

This has been a bizarre, challenging year, but one full of powerful moments of human connection. Wishing you a creative, loving 2023.

Alice

Forthcoming publications

I wrote a chapter for the labor anthology What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People. Other writers include Wendell Berry, Ocean Vuong, and former US poet laureate Joy Harjo. You can pre-order here.