Riding Like the Wind : The Life of Sanora Babb.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dunkle, Iris Jamahl.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Babb, Sanora.

Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968. Grapes of wrath.

Steinbeck, John.

Dust Bowl Era, 1931-1939.

Women authors, American--Biography.

Women authors, American.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (370 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2024.

Summary:

This saga of a writer done dirty resurrects the silenced voice of Sanora Babb, peerless author of midcentury American literature. In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collective imagination of the era. But it also stopped the publication of another important novel, silencing a gifted writer who was more intimately connected to the true experiences of Dust Bowl migrants. In Riding Like the Wind, renowned biographer Iris Jamahl Dunkle revives the groundbreaking voice of Sanora Babb. Dunkle follows Babb from her impoverished childhood in eastern Colorado to California. There, she befriended the era's literati, including Ray Bradbury and Ralph Ellison; entered into an illegal marriage; and was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was Babb's field notes and oral histories of migrant farmworkers that Steinbeck relied on to write his novel. But this is not merely a saga of literary usurping; on her own merits, Babb's impact was profound. Her life and work feature heavily in Ken Burns's award-winning documentary The Dust Bowl and inspired Kristin Hannah in her bestseller The Four Winds. Riding Like the Wind reminds us with fresh awareness that the stories we know--and who tells them--can change the way we remember history.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Cheyenne Riding Like the Wind

2. A Dugout on the High Plains

3. The House on Horse Creek

4. "Study Like a House Afire

5. Finding Venus

6. The Poet of Kansas

7. "Fling This Wild Song

8. The Writers' Congress

9. "I Demand You Write More Shamelessly and Nakedly

10. "You Can't Eat the Scenery

11. Whose Names Are Unknown

12. The Changed World

13. She Felt Like the Wind

14. "Follow That Furrow

15. "I Do Not Wish to Be Less than I Am

16. The Lost Traveler

17. "Dust on [Her] Own Hills

18. An Owl on Every Post

19. The Recovery of Whose Names Are Unknown

Epilogue: "She Deserved Better

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Photographs Follow Page.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-520-39547-6

OCLC:

1452598371