![]() ![]() In 1938, Babb, a 31-year-old editor and writer, volunteered with the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to help migrant farmers flooding into California. "I think I'm a better writer," Babb told the Chicago Tribune in 2004. Liking one novel over the other is a matter of taste Sanora Babb, as is natural, preferred her own work. One focuses on individual characters, the other attempts to tell a broader story about America. One spends more time in Oklahoma, the other spends more time in California. ![]() In many ways, the books are complementary takes on the same subject: one book is spare and detailed, the other is big and ambitious. Steinbeck’s work, considered his masterpiece by many, is a sweeping novel bursting with metaphor and imagery. Babb’s novel is a carefully observed portrayal of several families that draws on her Oklahoma childhood. While both novels are about displaced farmers coming to California, they’re very different books. Sanora Babb wrote Whose Names Are Unknown at the same time Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, using much of the same research material. But it also stopped the publication of another novel, silencing the voice of an author more intimately connected to the plight of Oklahoma migrants because she was one herself. ![]() The story of a destitute family fleeing the Dust Bowl sold 430,000 copies in a year and catapulted John Steinbeck to literary greatness. When The Grapes of Wrath came out 77 years ago, it was an instant hit. ![]()
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