Synopses & Reviews
Cultural Writing. Journalism. Introduction by Charles Wollenberg. Listed in NYU's "Top 100 List of the Century's Best American Journalism," this best-selling volume gathers seven newspaper articles on migrant farmworkers written for the San Francisco News in 1936 by John Steinbeck, three years before he wrote The Grapes of Wrath. With the inquisitiveness of an investigative reporter and the emotional power of a novelist in his prime, Steinbeck toured the squatters' camps and Hoovervilles of California. Here he found once strong, independent farmers so reduced in dignity, sick, sullen and defeated that they had been "cast down to a kind of subhumanity." He contrasts their misery with the hope offered by government resettlement camps, where self-help communities were restoring dignity and indeed saving lives. THE HARVEST GYPSIES gives us an eyewitness account of the horrendous Dust Bowl migration and provides the factual foundation for Steinbeck's masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. 22 B&W photos
Synopsis
Gathered in this important volume are seven newspaper articles on migrant farm workers that John Steinbeck wrote for The San Francisco News in 1936, three years before The Grapes of Wrath. With the inquisitiveness of an investigative reporter and the emotional power of a novelist in his prime, Steinbeck toured the squatters' camps and Hoovervilles of California. The Harvest Gypsies gives us an eyewitness account of the horrendous Dust Bowl migration, a major event in California history, and provides the factual foundation for Steinbeck's masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. Included are twenty-two photographs by Dorothea Lange and others, many of which accompanied Steinbeck's original articles.
Synopsis
Selected by NYU as one of the century's best books of American journalism.
Gathered in this volume are seven long-form articles that John Steinbeck wrote in 1936 for The San Francisco News about the plight of migrant farmworkers during the Dust Bowl, accompanied by photographs by Dorothea Lange and others. Steinbeck toured the squatters' camps and Hoovervilles of California, creating unforgettable portraits of once strong, independent farmers reduced to misery. The inquisitiveness and outrage of an investigative reporter combined with the expressive powers of a novelist in his prime fueled The Harvest Gypsies, which in turn furnished the factual and emotional roots for The Grapes of Wrath and has long been hailed as an American classic in its own right.