Pulitzer Book Club Inclusion Guide
"The Grapes of Wrath"
by John Steinbeck
INCLUSION MILESTONES
1940
• McDaniel wins "Gone with the Wind" Oscar yet is seated at segrated table
• Woody Guthrie writes "This Land is Your Land"
AUTHOR INSPIRATIONS
Steinbeck grew up in the Salinas Valley of California, aware of the plight of migrants. He worked as a manual laborer, and wrote for The San Francisco News about agricultural working conditions and camps. Steinbeck traveled with Oklahoma migrants and was with them in a squatter’s camp the night Of Mice and Men opened on Broadway. As a member of the League of American Writers, Steinbeck was targeted by Hoover and McCarthy.
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– Share your key take-away about inclusion in this book in a sentence or two.
– Write a paragraph or two (up to 250 words) to describe your thoughts on exclusion/inclusion in the book, why you related or did not connect with the book, and why you think reading, inclusion and dialog about inclusion matter.
– Identify the name and website address of a cause you support with an inclusive mission.
Dust Bowl busted sharecropper family migrates to California farmworker hell.
Hungry, malnourished children overtly covet family’s humble hard-won stew.
Created awareness of working and living conditions of migrant workers in California.
Reads quick: 406 pages, 21 hours
Those with little to share give.
Drought, bank foreclosures, tractors, deceptive job offers create poverty and migration to California. Devastating impact of agricultural economics on small farms and migrant farm worker families. Scope of poverty, deceptive labor practices create competition for very low wage jobs.
Corruption and migrant bigotry in law enforcement, used car sales, diners and stores, notably toward “Oakies.”
Religious zealots contrasted with people living in poverty who support each other.
Struggles of the formerly incarcerated, pregnant, elder, children in addition to challenges of migrant workers.
You labored all day, earned next to nothing, and want meat, but get fried dough cooked in bacon grease yet again – which is more appetizing than catching, killing, skinning and roasting rodents. There’s only a little sugar, so you can either sprinkle it on your dough or your coffee.
“It’s need that makes all the trouble.”
Cook on an open fire at a campground; eat on tin plates. Hopefully your campfire circle will include someone with a guitar. If it’s Saturday night, scrub up and square dance, but be on the lookout for troublemakers and aggressive law enforcement.
What did you learn about the plight of migrant farmworkers and agricultural economics? What problems remain? Compare attitudes toward migrants today with 1930s' views.
How can people living in poverty have hope?
Why do you think this novel was banned?
Why does a formerly incarcerated man not want to describe his experiences in prison?
How does the former preacher unite? How were religion and sin addressed in the novel?
What was the plight and future of children, pregnant young women, older persons?
Compare the roles and attitudes of women and men on farms and as migrants.
Provide examples and rationales for extreme bigotry and cruelty as well as support and sacrifice portrayed in the novel.
What did the government do to support people living in poverty? Why not more?
Is there support for people living in poverty under socialism or communism?
How did the U.S. government acquire land in California?
Has climate change, bigotry, and the political environment created a 21st century Grapes of Wrath? What is the solution?
Drive from Oklahoma to California with minimal money, without Waze in a beater cut down to resemble a pickup. Or go directly to Salinas and work on a you-pick farm and stay in a campground. Try to attend a Monterey County Farm Day educational session or 4-H exhibits at Salinas Valley Fair. Arrange an educational session at The Farm. See the National Steinbeck Center. Take a tour and have lunch at The Steinbeck House, John’s birthplace and boyhood home. Travel southwest to Arvin Federal Government Camp (Weedpatch Migrant Camp), Forty Acres in Delano (farmworkers movement), and Ceasar Chavez National Monument in Keen.
The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and 16 other Steinbeck works have been adapted to movies.
Novels cited in addition to The Grapes of Wrath in Steinbeck’s Nobel Literature Prize Citation: Tortilla Flat (1935), In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), The Long Valley (1938), East of Eden (1952), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), and Travels with Charley (1962). Their Blood is Strong (1938) is the collection of Steinbeck’s San Francisco News articles about migrant workers and agricultural working conditions in California. Steinbeck published non-fiction, plays and numerous works of fiction.