(female narrator #3) Everywhere you turn, people try to tell you who to be and what to do.

But what about deciding for yourself?

Roadtrip Nation is a movement that empowers people to define their own roads in life.

Every summer, we bring together three people from different backgrounds.

Together, they explore the country, interviewing inspiring individuals from all walks of life.

They hit the road in search of wisdom and guidance, to find what it actually takes to build a life around doing what you love.

This is what they found.

This is Roadtrip Nation.

(roadtripper #1) These are New York geese.

(roadtripper #2) You think they quack with an accent?

[roadtrippers laughing] (roadtripper #1) [affected New York accent] I'm waddling here!

We're about to drive into New York, and even just experiencing the roads on the outside of Manhattan were pretty nasty already.

No rush guys.

Take your time.

(roadtripper #2) All right, New York.

(Ed) As for New York itself, didn't really know what to expect.

(Olivia) I've never been to New York in a big green RV.

We cross the George Washington Bridge into the city and like, seeing the skyline and everything, you could just feel New York bursting at the seems.

Man, you've been prepping for this like nobody's business.

(Tele'jon) Being in a large vehicle, it felt out of place.

Feel like we didn't belong.

(Olivia) [laughing] Look at all these people who're already staring at us.

(Tele'jon) The energy?

I don't know, New York's fast; it's just constantly moving.

You never feel still.

(Ed) I can relax or caffeine up.

(Olivia) Yeah, it's just like a roller coaster.

[Ed] Manhattans enormous It's crazy seeing those streets going down that long.

So my mindset before going was pretty dubious about the RV, getting that into Manhattan.

Um, in my head, it was gonna be like carnage.

There were gonna be like taxis just like scraping against the side of the RV all the way, so I was like, "Oh god."

So we were expecting a really tough time parking.

(Olivia) All right.

(Ed) We're good, right?

(Olivia) You're good.

(Ed) Sweet!

But I don't know, some miracle, the parking gods or whatever answered our prayers.

(Olivia) Oh my goodness.

(Ed) That's phenomenal.

Pretty much as soon as we got in there, there was like this "Haaaaa", like you could see the light radiating from the parking spot.

(Olivia) One of the most beautiful things I've ever done in New York is find parking like that.

It's busy, it's energetic, loving it.

It'll be fun, uh, we have a day in Manhattan and a day in Brooklyn.

And then a day actually going out to Long Island, which is pretty special, too.

(Tele'jon) It makes sense that you're not gonna drive the RV around, so we took the subway.

It feels, it feels right.

Like, we drive around everywhere else, but in New York, it just feels like you're supposed to take the public transportation.

(Ed) Can you turn to the royal baby page?

I don't know the name of it yet.

I've gotta know the name!

(Olivia) Oh, there he is.

(Ed) Oh there it is.

We decided to go exploring.

You do the sights you think, I mean New York, all the sights I should do.

Times Square, kind of like an assault on the senses.

You're like, "Woah, okay."

Couple of cities we only experienced through the window of the RV.

But when you walk around a city and use like the subway, It just feels like you can explore it a bit more.

(Olivia) And some mustard.

(Ed) And then we went from there to the High Line, which is just the old above-ground metro system.

Someone had the genius idea of turning it into a walkway with like plants, all these kind of interactive things and like art sculptures and things.

And the whole thing you could see, like look down and see the streets working and functioning underneath you.

And its awesome!

(Olivia) [laughing] This billboard, it says, "Stop praying‚ God's too busy to find you a parking spot", but we must have direct connect because we got it, like that.

(Ed) I'm quite happy, like, just to wander.

I still haven't gotten a sense of the size of it.

(Olivia) Right.

(Ed) I don't know what it would take for me to get a sense of the size of the city.

(Olivia) Larger than life, as New York should be.

(Ed) I like New York.

(Olivia) So like you're parked on the streets sleeping in the RV.

It is that fine line between, like, homelessness and the rich life.

Travelers, you know, we live the life of travelers.

(Tele'jon) We're looking for people who like, who enjoy doing what they're doing, right?

This person's doing like an interesting job, or they're doing something pretty cool, let's call 'em up.

This interview's gonna be amazing, okay?

This is gonna be a top-notch interview.

I'm juiced, let's do it.

(Ed) So we're interviewing Staceyann Chin, who is a spoken word artist and a LGBT rights activist here in New York.

Really trying to push forward what she believes in, and I thought, "That sounds really cool."

(Staceyann) Hi.

(Ed) Hi, Staceyann-- (Staceyann) Come on in, come on in, come in.

(Tele'jon) I'm Tele'jon.

(Staceyann) [Jamaican accent] I have been a poet, a rebel rouser, a dissenter, a‚ an activitist.

And um-- [baby noises] Really, Zuri, really?

And I'm raising a kid.

(Ed) You're raising a kid.

Yes.

Who is now wiping cream cheese on me.

♪ I was born on the island of Jamaica.

My mother left me and my brother when I was born.

Um, I suffered at the hands of all kinds of abuse.

[Zuri making noises] I suffered at the hands of, you know, relatives who I don't think were equipped to care for a small child, and particularly a small child who was mouthy.

(Ed) You were disagreeing at that age?

(Staceyann) Y-yes, and I remained that way throughout my teen years, I think, but I think my methods of questioning evolved, became more sophisticated.

I started to do that within the context of school.

(Tele'jon) When did you start writing, like poetry?

(Staceyann) When did I start writing?

That is the million dollar question because I always ask myself, like what constitutes writing.

'Cause I wrote in a journal, you know, when I was young, you know, the angsty "Oh my god, I wish my mother would come and get me".

You know, all that stuff, I just kind of wrote, wrote, and wrote.

I'm looking at some of your achievements and-- Oh lord.

(Tele'jon) Um, yeah.

I wanna know when did um, when did you become like a storyteller?

Like you've been writing for a long time now, but when did you start telling those stories?

(Staceyann) When I was young and I had such a horrible life at home and I was going to school with children who had a different life from me, I started making up stories.

So‚ maybe people saw me as the little waif, the wretch, the loudmouth.

When I wrote things down, I could imagine a narrative that was different from the one I was living.

I could be Oliver Twist, Anne of Green Gables, or any one of those horrid stories, where young kid born in difficult circumstances makes it.

You know when I was a kid, I used to hide everything, like hide all the terrible details of my life and kind of pull them close to me and try to make them look like something else to other people when I told the story.

(Ed) Yeah.

(Staceyann) Um, and I think when I was 17 and I went away to college, I got very tired of trying to keep track of all my lies.

So I decided I would never tell a lie again.

I got so tired of it, I walked right into my college roommate and I just kind of blurted out like, "My mother left me when I was a baby, "my father doesn't want me, and my cousins all tried to "rape me, and um, I'm not a Christian anymore, I don't believe in God, and um, I'm here on a scholarship."

And I don't think she spoke to me for the rest of the semester.

But basically, um, I think that was a valuable accident I happened upon.

Because after that, I was just like the tell-all girl.

The tell-too-much girl.

And I think, I think um, when I became a lesbian, I continued to be that kind of person, telling everyone about it in a culture that was, um, violently homophobic.

And, of course, lots of people didn't respond well.

And I became quite isolated, and um, I became a target on campus for a lot of, um‚ a lot of difficult, um‚ a dozen boys, you know, hauled me off into a bathroom and sexually assaulted me.

And um-- (Olivia) What age were you then?

I was 22 when it happened, and you know, I remember kind of collapsing on the floor and kind of holding myself in for a long, long, long time before I could move, before I could admit that this happened to me.

Because during the assault, I didn't say anything.

And I was such a big mouth before that.

I was so like [grunts], "If anything happened, I would, I would--and let them, let one of them say something to me.

I'll show 'em!"

And then throughout the entire assault, I did not say a word, I was silent, I was‚ docile, I was submissive.

And I was deeply afraid.

And I was very ashamed that I was not fierce.

And that was more shameful to you than the event itself?

(Staceyann) Absolutely, absolutely.

(Olivia) Do you think that's, that's why we as women blame ourselves when we're assaulted?

Not from the event, but because we know it's common, but‚ I mean it makes more sense in my head the lack of our response and lack of a voice.

I think that the lack of voice, um, certainly underscores the shame that is put on you, even when you don't feel ashamed, because there are women who don't feel ashamed, but society will approach them as if it's their fault all the time.

Really what did you do to invite this upon yourself, what could you have done to prevent it?

And so we don't have conversations with young boys about sexual assault and the damage that girls carry when that kind of thing occurs, but we talk to girls about self-defense.

You know, the issue of rape, the issue of sexual assault, it's not an issue that belongs to any one gender.

We are all culpable of the philosophies, of the ideologies that feed the continued phenomenon of rape.

You know, it's how we um, we glorify boys who can "get" girls.

It's how we "shame" women who‚ take‚ desired pleasures from their bodies when they want to.

With whom they want to.

I think after the boys in the bathroom, I really understood that I could not live a life of - of being an out lesbian in Jamaica.

And so I packed up.

I just bought the tickets and landed in New York City.

How were you supporting yourself?

How do you-- (Staceyann) I would do odd jobs, you know?

Um, for people--babysit for friends of mine for a night.

Ten dollars could get me‚ five dollars on a MetroCard and then use four dollars to buy ramen noodles, and that would mean I could eat and move through, through the city for the next week.

And somewhere in the first couple of months of being here, I discovered the poetry scene.

You know, people were examining their own lives-- people who didn't want to go to nine-to-five jobs, and so our day began whenever we got up, and we would write bad poems, good poems all day, get on a microphone and read what you'd written.

(Olivia) Do you remember the first thing you read in public?

(Staceyann) It, uh, it's a rather terrible poem.

[roadtrippers laughing] (Staceyann) And it's about this young girl who was um, being molested by her-her uncle and, you know, he would come into her room and then one night she got a knife and let him have it.

An-and that's part fiction, but I think that story came from an incident that happened when I was a kid, when one of my cousins came into my room.

I had to navigate him for a couple of months before that, and that night, I laid in wait with my pencil‚ and I let him have it with my pencil.

And I got spanked for um, for stabbing him with a pencil, but no other questions were asked.

And so I maybe, my adult self maybe took it to New York, where the freedom where I could say 'knife' or I could kill him, and I read it out loud.

It was, it was empowering to-to roar.

And from the first time I got up on the stage, people responded in this kind of loud like "Oh my God!

Who is this woman?"

You know, I knew that I had found‚ my voice.

(Staceyann) --all who choose to bear witness to a reckoning Things change.

Things always change!

Progress, it is the way of humanity.

The way of growth, the way of growth.

And when it ends, when the iron hand of this era eventually ends I want to be standing on the right side of progress The side of truth, the side of compassion and equality I want to say, "Yes, I was there!

"I was present among the dissenting "standing in the unrelenting turn of a time when every family, united by love became covered under the law."

From the Golden Gate, to the Statue of Liberty, from Florida to Niagra Equality   is more than just a word we lend to politicians to garner votes.

It has to be more than wrote, it has to become breath and repetition.

It has to be a right, it has to be the light we all can run to.

It has to be what we say, what we believe.

What we chant.

What we want is equality, is equality, say it with me!

What we say, what we believe, what we chant, What we want is equality.

Is equality.

Is equality!

Is equality-y-y!

You know, I rage, I rant, I am on every social media.

You know‚ agitating conversation.

[laughs] Um, I think it's been a wonderful, valuable, serendipitous, amazing journey towards this person I've become.

I'd be interested to know if yo-your art and your activism is work for you.

Well yes, because you know, on the one hand it is work because I get paid for doing what I do.

I think that I work very hard to make sure my work‚ pulls me towards growth, towards examining my own biases.

You know, I want to be strong and I want to be fierce; I want to do this until I'm dead.

And so I have to keep Zuri fed and clothed and sheltered, but I also have to keep myself, my spirit, fed.

So I have to find a way to say, "The work I do matters," and it is in li-, in keeping with the politic that I started when I was 20.

I believe God is that place between belief and what you name it.

I believe holy is what you do when there is nothing between your actions and the truth.

The truth is I am afraid to draw your black lines around me.

I'm not always pale in the middle.

I come in too many flavors for one [profanity] spoon.

I am never one thing or the other.

At night, I am everything I fear: tears and sorrows, black windows and muffled screams.

In the morning, I am all I ever want to be: rain and laughter, bare footprints and invisible seams.

Always without breath or definition.

I claim every single dawn, for yesterday is simply what I was, and tomorrow even that will be gone.

I encourage young people to question everything.

I think that when you're young, you have a lot more space to‚ to attempt the impossible.

To do the crazy, to stand on a limb and teeter.

I say teeter away.

Reach, leap, attempt things that everyone says can't be done.

You are your bravest self.

And when I say brave, I don't mean the quiet courage that it takes to raise a child.

I mean the courage to‚ to do what no one else is doing.

If you're 20, that means you have 50 to 70 years left.

Run, jump, move, walk.

Get your crazy done.

[laughs] Get in an RV and drive across America and talk to the people you want to talk to.

These are the years to climb a mountain, these are the years to break an arm, these are the years to fall in love and recover and fall in love again and recover and to make love in a hundred different cities and shave your head and take a year off from your life to do something that makes no sense to anyone else.

Do it while your body is supple, while it is young, while it is able to recover from the trauma of doing such things.

[all laughing] Do it, do it, do it now and live it.

Live, live, live, live.

Get it out, get it out of your system, so that when it is that you have an ankle that is sore and you have bills to pay and you have a kid to watch at night, that there are no regrets behind you.

It's, you know, the heaviest thing you will have to carry as you move forward is regret.

Make sure you're not carrying too much.

♪ (Ed) The interviews are nothing like what I expected.

And very much for the better.

I wasn't expecting anything like that.

(Olivia) That was a pretty inspiring interview.

She was so open about, like, embracing youth and life and having a sense of self.

(Tele'jon) Her energy was amazing.

The positivity that- that radiated from her was super inspiring.

It basically let me know that I need to use my time.

You know, the time that I do have?

I need to take advantage of it.

I need to go do something with it.

(Ed) We felt pretty hopped up.

[laughs] Like, "Oh, we should, we should run and jump."

Um, you know, I don't know where to run and jump.

We got the Atlantic Ocean pretty much right there, and I kind of figured I should swim in it.

[laughs] We're gonna have to go out though with just our swimming stuff 'cause we're not gonna be able to leave any dry stuff on the shore.

[laughs] [ethereal music] It was just one of those good moments.

All of us kind of running in and enjoying it.

From now on, we're gonna be heading west.

We'll probably never be here as a three again.

Let's just enjoy the moment.

And we all enjoyed the moment.

We're doing an interview here with a woman called Beverly, who's a writer.

(Beverly) I thought, "Who am I kidding?

I can't write.

I quit."

It was devastating.

Because it has happened so often, I thrive from adversity.

It's like, "All right, I'll show you!"

(Tele'jon) We are en route to Detroit.

(Ed) And then we're gonna head to Chicago.

(Dave) I'm Dave Stovall, born and raised here in Chicago.

The rest of the world is saying all these things about you.

What are you going to do to prove them wrong?

(female narrator #4) Roadtrip Nation extends beyond program you just watched.

Online, you will find an extensive archive with even more stories from the road.

Here's a quick snapshot of another interview from this roadtrip.

(leader #1) I'm the executive director and co-founder of The Brotherhood-SisterSol.

My co-founder and I grew up together here not far from this building.

It was a very intense time to grow up in the city, to be very confronted with so much, uh, inequity and so many social problems that uh, you know, inspired in me a desire to seek change and to try to kind of break some of the cycles of poverty and also expectation of the kind of jobs that one is supposed to have.

What we try to do here as a staff at Brotherhood-SisterSol is provide examples to the 350 young people we work with in a year of what positive, strong images of women and men look like.

We started with conviction, you know, so it was my co-founder and I, Jason Warwin.

We sat down, we were committed to this issue, and started working with a group of young men who were disconnected, who were selling drugs, who were doing, you know, involved in gang activity, to instill in them the desire and the passion to really better themselves and then provide the opportunities where they can see that way out.

The greatest force that people bring to having successful lives that excite them, that make them happy, that make them able to contribute to society, is to find out what they really love to do.

It's a great gift to be able to find something that you love to do and to be able to do it.

(girl #1) No matter what you do-- (boy #1) Or where you come from-- (boy #2) You've got wisdom to pass down.

(male narrator #3) Help young people find their way by sharing the lessons you've learned.

Take 15 minutes to tell us what you love to do.

(boy #1) The door is open-- (boy #2) We're all ears.

(girl #1) Become a leader at ShareYourRoad.com ♪