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Whose Names Are Unknown : A Novel by Sanora Babb (2006, Trade Paperback)

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Number of Pages: 240. Weight: 0.62 lbs. Publication Date: 2006-02-01. Publisher: UNIV OF OKLAHOMA PR.

About this product

Product Information

Sanora Babb's long-hidden novel Whose Names Are Unknown tells an intimate story of the High Plains farmers who fled drought dust storms during the Great Depression. Written with empathy for the farmers' plight, this powerful narrative is based upon the author's firsthand experience. This clear-eyed and unsentimental story centers on the fictional Dunne family as they struggle to survive and endure while never losing faith in themselves. In the Oklahoma Panhandle, Milt, Julia, their two little girls, and Milt's father, Konkie, share a life of cramped circumstances in a one-room dugout with never enough to eat. Yet buried in the drudgery of their everyday life are aspirations, failed dreams, and fleeting moments of hope. The land is their dream. The Dunne family and the farmers around them fight desperately for the land they love, but the droughts of the thirties force them to abandon their fields. When they join the exodus to the irrigated valleys of California, they discover not the promised land, but an abusive labor system arrayed against destitute immigrants. The system labels all farmers like them as worthless "Okies" and earmarks them for beatings and worse when hardworking men and women, such as Milt and Julia, object to wages so low they can't possibly feed their children. The informal communal relations these dryland farmers knew on the High Plains gradually coalesce into a shared determination to resist. Realizing that a unified community is their best hope for survival, the Dunnes join with their fellow workers and begin the struggle to improve migrant working conditions through democratic organization and collective protest. Babb wrote Whose Names are Unknown in the 1930s while working with refugee farmers in the Farm Security Administration (FSA) camps of California. Originally from the Oklahoma Panhandle are herself, Babb, who had first come to Los Angeles in 1929 as a journalist, joined FSA camp administrator Tom Collins in 1938 to help the uprooted farmers. As Lawrence R. Rodgers notes in his foreword, Babb submitted the manuscript for this book to Random House for consideration in 1939. Editor Bennett Cerf planned to publish this "exceptionally fine" novel but when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath swept the nation, Cerf explained that the market could not support two books on the subject. Babb has since shared her manuscript with interested scholars who have deemed it a classic in its own right. In an era when the country was deeply divided on social legislation issues and millions drifted unemployed and homeless, Babb recorded the stories of the people she greatly respected, those "whose names are unknown." In doing so, she returned to them their identities and dignity, and put a human face on economic disaster and social distress.

Product Identifiers

Publisher
University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN-10
0806137126
ISBN-13
9780806137124
eBay Product ID (ePID)
50483734

Product Key Features

Book Title
Whose Names Are Unknown : a Novel
Author
Sanora Babb
Format
Trade Paperback
Language
English
Topic
Psychological, Literary, Historical
Publication Year
2006
Genre
Fiction
Number of Pages
240 Pages

Dimensions

Item Length
8.4in
Item Height
0.6in
Item Width
5.5in
Item Weight
10.4 Oz

Additional Product Features

Reviews
"The publication of Whose Names Are Unknown rights a decades-old literary wrong." -- The Salt Lake Tribune, Babb puts a human face on the Okies" and others who faced economic and social disaster, yet managed to retain their humanness, faith, and inner dignity. Is it better that Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath ? I think so, but you be the judge" -- Mike Nobles , Tulsa World, "Sanora Babb's Whose Names Are Unknown has enjoyed an underground reputation for many years among those scholars who have known of its existence. Babb is a skillful artist who identified wholeheartedly with the ordeal of the dispossessed during the 1930s. The recovery of her novel is a miraculous gift that will play an important part in future reconsiderations of mid-century U.S. literature." - Alan M. Wald , author of Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left, "The publication of Whose Names Are Unknown rights a decades-old literary wrong." - The Salt Lake Tribune, As vibrant and timely today as when it was begun in the migrant camps of California, Sanora Babb's first novel depicts the pride, suffering, and resilience of uprooted Anglo farmers who confront economic and ecological disaster. Resisting forces within society that devalue and marginalize them, the declassed refugees work together to form enduring communities." -- Douglas Wixson , author of Worker-Writer in America: Jack Conroy and the Tradition of Midwestern Literary Radicalism, 1898-1869, Babb puts a human face on the "Okies" and others who faced economic and social disaster, yet managed to retain their humanness, faith, and inner dignity. Is it better that Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath ? I think so, but you be the judge" - Mike Nobles , Tulsa World, "Sanora Babb's Whose Names Are Unknown has enjoyed an underground reputation for many years among those scholars who have known of its existence. Babb is a skillful artist who identified wholeheartedly with the ordeal of the dispossessed during the 1930s. The recovery of her novel is a miraculous gift that will play an important part in future reconsiderations of mid-century U.S. literature." -- Alan M. Wald , author of Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left, "As vibrant and timely today as when it was begun in the migrant camps of California, Sanora Babb's first novel depicts the pride, suffering, and resilience of uprooted Anglo farmers who confront economic and ecological disaster. Resisting forces within society that devalue and marginalize them, the declassed refugees work together to form enduring communities." - Douglas Wixson , author of Worker-Writer in America: Jack Conroy and the Tradition of Midwestern Literary Radicalism, 1898-1869
Copyright Date
2006
Dewey Decimal
813/.54
Intended Audience
Trade
Dewey Edition
22

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4.8

4.8 out of 5 stars based on 5 product ratings

5 product ratings

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Most relevant reviews

5 out of 5 stars
by bschultz73Mar 25, 2024
Live with the Okies
It is a wonderful book about the tragedies endured by the people who had to leave their hoes and head to California during the dust storms of the thirties. John Steinbeck appropriated some of her work without giving her credit. Her book is better than The Grapes of Wrath.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
5 out of 5 stars
by _TsU9XsAQCi@Del...Jun 22, 2021
Refers to people driven off their farms
Excellence novels telling of the devastation of the 1930s dust bowl and the lives it destroyed. Should have been published much sooner than it was but John Steinbeck was published first. However this does not lessen the impact of this work. Recommended.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
4 out of 5 stars
by kathyd5459Feb 28, 2021
Ok
Ok but not compelling
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
5 out of 5 stars
by WvEmgjCAR4C@Del...Nov 01, 2016
and you thought you had it bad
this book is about family trying to survive the dust bowl brownouts of the 1930s,
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned

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