Strangers in a Strange Homeland
America Road Trip Project Update No. 1
So the America Road Trip Project is coming together quickly.
This will be the first of a series of updates I plan to post as we prepare to launch on September 11th. I’m planning to update readers on developments as they occur and keep asking for your help as we plot our route and primary stops along the way.
Once we get underway, I’ll publish a series of reports from the road. These reports will be dashed off late at night in unsanitary motel rooms, or in the little fenced off “designated smoking areas” in the parking lots of unsanitary motels, and in other more luxurious accommodations that have been offered to us by kind and generous readers … what I’m getting at is, they probably won’t be as polished (i.e., obsessively over-edited) as my usual columns, these reports.
Before I get going with Update No. 1, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the readers who have contributed to our fundraising campaign, or have offered us a place to spend the night, or are coordinating events and gatherings in their areas.
Thank you, all of you! Your support is incredibly moving and encouraging!
OK, here comes the update.
I had to whip up a press statement for my publisher, and it started me reflecting on the spirit of this project. I’m drowning in dates, cities, and details at the moment, so I’m just going to paste the press statement in here (rather than reworking it to try to make it sound like I wrote it for this update). Here it is …
STRANGERS IN A STRANGE HOMELAND
On the Road in 21st Century America
(working title)
Press Statement
C. J. Hopkins
During September-October 2025, photographer Hugo Fernandez and I will travel throughout the USA by car, talking to people from all walks of life and of all political persuasions and taking photos of the country along the way. Our adventures on the road, the stories and perspectives of the people we meet, and Hugo’s photographs will be published as a book by Arcade Publishing in 2026.
Our goal is to paint a portrait of America, in all its complexity, at this historical (and historic) moment.
Many other authors and photographers have done such “Portrait of America” road-trip projects, Robert Frank, John Steinbeck, and James Agee and Walker Evans, to name just a few. So that’s not new. What is unique, however, is the perspective I bring to it. I’m an American, and I traveled all over the USA in my youth, but I have lived in Europe for twenty years. So, in a sense, I am coming home to a country I have never been to before. I want to discover and explore that country as it is today, or as much of it as I can, as “a stranger in a strange homeland.”
Hugo Fernandez, a professor at LaGuardia Community College/CUNY, will also be seeing the country with somewhat estranged eyes. Having mostly worked with large-format photography for the last forty years, he’ll be returning to the handheld B&W style of his early work for this project.
And, in a broader sense, aren’t we Americans all “strangers in a strange homeland,” no matter how far back our roots in the country go, or how long we may have been away from home? Except for the Native Americans, we’re all from somewhere else.
In these times of extreme political polarization, cultural fragmentation, confusion, anger, and fear, what is it, if anything, that still unites us as Americans? How did we get here? Where are we? Where are we headed? These are some of the questions I’m hoping to explore with the people we meet along the road.
So, there. That’s the spirit of this project, as much as I understand it at this stage.
Here’s what we think our route looks like currently. Everything is still evolving and subject to change, of course, but we’re already accepting invitations from hosts and scheduling events, so the general shape of it is fairly accurate. We’ll be traveling on secondary roads/highways whenever possible, and stopping at interesting places on the way from point to point.
New York City — I lived in New York for fifteen years, and Hugo teaches there, so that’s where we will start out on our journey, on September 11.
Philadelphia — Debbie Lerman is going to hook us up with interesting locals. Debbie is a writer who has a new book out, The Deep State Goes Viral. Check her work out (but then come right back to this update and read the rest).
Hillsboro, West Virginia — Harley Lennon Squires, the proprietor of The Levels Depot Café has graciously invited me to do a book reading/discussion event there on Sunday, September 14. If you live in the area, I hope you’ll come talk with us.
Kentucky — Possibly. We have to spend the night somewhere on our way to …
Chicago — I’ll be attending an event held by Integrity Media, an organization that supports non-partisan independent media, journalists, and publishers (e.g., like me). And Hugo and I will be cruising around the city soaking everything in.
St. Louis — We’ll be stopping here to visit the grave of William S. Burroughs, and the birthplace of T. S. Eliot, and maybe even the grave of Tennessee Williams, who wanted to be buried at sea, but wound up buried in St. Louis. So it goes.
Kansas City — Pretty much the exact middle of the USA. I’m discussing a couple possible events here but nothing is confirmed yet. My dear old friend and partner in theatrical thought crime, John Clancy, lives in Kansas City now. John will hook us up with the locals. We’ll be in Kansas City September 20-21.
Colorado — Boulder, probably, unless you have a better idea for a stop along our route or want to put together a little gathering of locals somewhere and invite us.
Big Sky Country — No idea yet where we’re going to stop. Basically, we have six days to get from Kansas City to Portland, so … Wyoming, Montana, Idaho maybe. Again, if you live in this part of the country, and have suggestions or invitations, please let me know.
Portland, Oregon — or, actually, Gresham, which is a suburb of Portland, or part of Portland, or something like that. A gracious reader is hosting us here, and has arranged a reading/discussion event at The Scout, a lovely wine bar in Gresham. That will happen on September 28. The next morning we’ll tear ass down to …
Ashland/Medford, Oregon — Margaret Anna Alice, who some of you will know from her writings, has been working overtime trying to arrange a couple events. There will be a reading/signing event either at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland or at Barnes & Noble in Medford on September 29, and the next day there will be a mini-quasi-townhall-type thing in a local restaurant/drinking establishment. I’ll post details in a later update.
San Francisco — I lived here in the mid-to-late 1980s, before the dotcom boom. Honestly, I’m afraid to go back, because I have such fond memories of my years there, and I’ve read a lot of horror stories about what the city has become. But I can’t leave it out of the book. Hugo also lived in SF for a while, although not as long as I did. We escaped from Miami together in 1985, during a hurricane, but that’s a story for another time, maybe in the book. Anyway, if you are in the Bay Area, and want to get some folks together and talk about America, get in touch. We’ll be there October 2-4, probably.
Los Angeles — My cousin, Peter LaTona, a major patron of this project, and all my work, and the one who first introduced me to writers like Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, and Herman Hesse and musicians like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, is hosting us in Los Angeles. I have a few friends there, and Peter is going to hook us up with some of his people, but, again, if you live in the Los Angeles area and want to get some people together and talk about America, please get in touch.
New Mexico — Santa Fe, probably, but nothing is confirmed. We’ll have to stop somewhere on our way to Austin.
Texas — I have no idea, Lubbock, maybe.
Austin — I have never been to Austin, and I don’t know anyone in Austin, but I feel like it needs to be in the book. If you live in the Austin area and want to get some people together and talk about America, please get in touch.
Houston — Just a quick overnight stop here on our way to …
New Orleans — I love New Orleans, or at least I did thirty-something years ago, the last time I was there. A lot has happened to the city since then. Again, if you live there and want to show us around or get a little gathering of locals together, please get in touch. We’ll be there circa October 16-17.
The South — Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas? No idea yet. It’s all up in the air at the moment.
Washington DC — We need to wake up in DC on October 24, because I need to be back in New York City the next day. We’ve got a couple of things lined up, no events, just people to meet and talk with. And perhaps we’ll swing by the White House and ask President Trump or Vice President J. D. Vance to catch us up on what’s happening with those unsavory Epstein files, and the rest of the “Making Great Again” of America.
That’s the current version of our ever-evolving route.
And here’s what our Free Funder campaign looks like at the moment …
Again, heartfelt thanks to everyone who has contributed to the Free Funder campaign or has sent me a contribution directly. You are making this road trip (and what I think might turn out to be a pretty good book) happen. We’re not quite there yet—I’m afraid I lowballed our projected expenses a bit—but I’m confident we’re going to get there.
Stay tuned for further updates. Until then …
All best from sunny Berlin,
CJ
I see that a number of readers are writing in and urging me to talk to people outside the big cities. Thanks, I understand your concern. However, if you reflect on our route, you will see that many non-urban areas exist between the cities listed. As I tried to make clear in my update, we plan to stop there, in those non-urban areas, and try to talk to people. But I do not have any contacts in those non-urban areas, so that makes it difficult to plan a route based on them. The cities on our route will get us from place to place. America is there, in those cities, and in the non-urban areas between those cities. If you live in one of those non-urban areas and want to arrange a gathering, please let me know. (See, e.g., Roger Mitchell's kind offer to help us out in Western Montana below. Harley Lennon Squires invited us to Hillsboro, West Virginia, which I believe is relatively non-urban. A kind gentlemen just wrote to invite us to a horse farm outside Peoria, which I would love to do instead of visiting dead writers' graves in St. Louis. That is how we are connecting with people in non-urban areas, i.e., by people responding to my requests for invitations and help making those connections.)
CJ, I noticed you don't have anything lined up for Big Sky Country, so I would like to recommend a course of action.
I live in western Montana, about 30 miles south of Missoula. One of my good friends, Dan Shumway, owns and operates a local digital radio station, BBR Radio, and does interviews with people from all over the world, including some famous ones. He has worked for years as a reporter with KLA-TV, which you may recognize since it is headquartered in Germany. I am sure he would jump at the chance to sit down with you for a little while if you have time while in this area. I will mention this to him as well.
If this appeals to you, please reply to this comment and I will begin to put it together. It would be a pleasure for me.