Purchase
"A thorough study of the migration of Oklahomans, Arkansans, Texans, and Missourians to California in the years of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Gregory dispels the popular Okie image built from The Grapes of Wrath." Library Journal
Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California
Duke University Press
September 1991
368 pages ISBN: 0195071360 Trade Size (reprint)
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
Fifty years ago, John Steinbeck's now classic novel, The
Grapes of Wrath, captured the epic story of an Oklahoma
farm family driven west to California by dust storms,
drought, and economic hardship. It was a story that
generations of Americans have also come to know through
Dorothea Lange's unforgettable photos of migrant families
struggling to make a living in Depression-torn California.
Now in James N. Gregory's pathbreaking American Exodus,
there is at last an historical study that moves beyond the
fiction and the photographs to uncover the full meaning of
these events.
American Exodus takes us back to the Dust Bowl migration of
the 1930s and the war boom influx of the 1940s to explore
the experiences of the more than one million Oklahomans,
Arkansans, Texans, and Missourians who sought opportunities
in California. Gregory reaches into the migrants' lives to
reveal not only their economic trials but also their impact
on California's culture and society. He traces the
development of an "Okie subculture" that over the years has
grown into an essential element in California's cultural
landscape. The consequences, however, reach far beyond California. The
Dust Bowl migration was part of a larger heartland diaspora
that has sent millions of Southerners and rural
Midwesterners to the nation's northern and western
industrial perimeter. American Exodus is the first book to
examine the cultural implications of that massive 20th-
century population shift. In this rich account of the
experiences and impact of these migrant heartlanders,
Gregory fills an important gap in recent American social
history.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|