Unknown no more : recovering Sanora Babb / edited by Joanne Dearcopp and Christine Hill Smith ; foreword by David M. Wrobel.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Dearcopp, Joanne, 1944- editor.

Smith, Christie, editor.

Wrobel, David M., writer of foreword.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Babb, Sanora--Criticism and interpretation.

Babb, Sanora.

Literature, Modern--20th century.

Literature, Modern.

Women authors--20th century.

Women authors.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xvii, 209 pages : portrait ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, [2021]

Summary:

"Thanks in part to the Ken Burns documentary The Dust Bowl, Sanora Babb is perhaps best known today for her novel Whose Names Are Unknown (2004), which might have been published in 1939 had her publisher not thought the market too small for two Dust Bowl novels, hers and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Into the twenty-first century, Babb wrote and published lyrical prose and poetry that revealed her prescient ideas about gender, race, and the environment. The essays collected in Unknown No More recover and analyze her previously unrecognized contributions to American letters. Editors Joanne Dearcopp and Christine Hill Smith have assembled a group of distinguished scholars who, for the first time in book-length form, explore the life and work of Sanora Babb. This collection of pathbreaking essays addresses Babb's position within the literature of the Great Plains and American West, her leftist political odyssey as a card-carrying Communist who ultimately broke with the Party, and her ecofeminist leanings as reflected in the environmental themes she explored in her fiction and nonfiction. With literary sensibilities reminiscent of Willa Cather, Ralph Ellison, and Meridel LeSueur, Babb's work revealed gender-based, environmental, and working-class injustices from the Depression era to the late twentieth century. No longer unknown, Sanora Babb's life and work form a prism through which the peril and promise of twentieth-century America may be seen. "-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Sanora Babb in Her Time and Ours / Alan M. Wald

2. Thinking like the Plains: The Creation of Sanora Babb's Land Ethic / Jessica Hellmann

3. Discovering Ecofeminism in Sanora Babb's Narratives / Erin Royston Battat

4. The Real West in Sanora Babb's Short Stories / Iris Jamahl Dunkle

5. Maternal Thinking in Sanora Babb's An Owl on Every Post / Katherine Witt

6. Resilience in Sanora Babb's Life and Characters / Amy Strickland Smith

7. Sanora Babb's An Owl on Every Post in the Canon of American Literature / Daryl W. Palmer

8. "Today Is a Terror": Whose Names Are Unknown and the "New" Dust Bowl Novel / Christopher Bowman

9. Farm Fiction: Cather, Wilder, and Babb / Tracy Sanford Tucker

10. The Radical Voice of Sanora Babb / Christine Hill Smith

11. Erratic Orbit: Sanora Babb, Poet / Carol S. Loranger

12. Transcending Regional Literature: Teaching Sanora Babb / Cullen Whisenhunt

13. No Longer Unknown: Exploring the Archive of Sanora Babb / Mariah Wahl.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780806169361

0806169362

OCLC:

1243024731