Coupled with the effects of the Depression on the nation as a whole, many families in the region were devastate d, particularly those who relied on agriculture to make a living. For many, the only choice they had was to leave, and they found themselves on Route 66 headed to California.
Many of these families ended up in the Salinas Valley, where John Steinbeck was born, raised, and lived the majority of his life. Dust Bowl migration, the shaping of Californian identity , and human connection to the environment are all deeply personal topics for Steinbeck. Susan Shillinglaw is a Steinbeck scholar and the author of On Reading The Grapes of Wrath , which reflects on the social, political, and creative impact of The Grapes of Wrath from the time of its publication through to today.
How do you write about weather pattern s, drought, migration, and identity at once, as it is happening? Containing that contemporary story was a challenge … and one way that he met that challenge was to construct a family story that is punctuated by interchapters that tell a larger cultural and historical story. He structured the book so that it moves from one family, to many families, to the human experience. Capturing the human experience of migrant farmworkers also made The Grapes of Wrath controversial.
The political frenzy went so far that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, upon reading the book, called for congressional hearings that resulted in reform to labor laws governing migrant camps.
In reality, critics had very little to argue about. Like Steinbeck and everyone else in her community, she saw migrant families like the Joads arrive in droves , many living in cardboard boxes in camps. If you were coming up through the class es, you were a fan of him. But even those that disliked him respected his writing. He just wrote things as they really were. I remember everything exactly as the way he wrote it.
How we all felt about Okies, that word had a horrible connotation. Everybody disliked them. But his books helped people see that they were just here looking for work and trying to pull themselves up, and in the end they did. Says Shillinglaw:. So much of the dialogue today is about taking away food stamps or welfare, for example, and Steinbeck was a passionate voice for empathy. In the present context, The Grapes of Wrath once again serves as a resource for examining human-environmental interaction.
Roughly ten of the top 20 metropolitan area s with the highest unemployment rates are in the Central Valley of California. By the end of all this, we may be looking at a multi-billion dollar disaster. Edition First edition. Seller Peter L. Published Condition First Edition. A bit better than very good in dust jacket; in a full-leather clamshell box. A fine copy in an immaculate price-clipped dust jacket with only the most minute wear.
Seller James M. A fine copy in a dust jacket with very light wear. Seller Buddenbrooks, Inc. Published Condition Reprint edition. A very good copy in dust jacket; in a custom cloth clamshell box. Chicago citation style Franky Abbott. Accessed November 14, Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete. A photograph of a dust storm near Beaver, Oklahoma, A photograph by Dorothea Lange of a residence inhabited by the Howards, a family of migrants, A handbill advertising jobs for cotton pickers in Arizona, A Santa Fe Railroad advertisement for travel to California.
A photograph of a homeless family of tenant farmers in
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