“You Can’t Eat the Scenery”: The Legacy of Sanora Babb and the Dust Bowl
November 7, 7:00 pm-8:30 pm
FreeIn 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. Renown biographer Iris Jamahl Dunkle joins us at 101 Archer to talk about her new book “In Riding Like the Wind,” which revives the groundbreaking voice of Sanora Babb.
Dunkle will give her talk in the North Gallery of 101 Archer, where a new exhibit about Steinbeck will be on display. Attendees will be able to see the exhibit and have the opportunity to buy Dunkle’s book from Magic City Books.
About the Book
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.
About the Author
Iris Jamahl Dunkle is an award-winning literary biographer and poet and former Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, CA. Her latest books include the biography Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020) and her poetry collection West : Fire : Archive (The Center for Literary Publishing, 2021). Dunkle received her MFA from New York University and her Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University. She’s received fellowships from Biography International, Vermont Studio Center, and Millay Arts.