While it is happening and i dont want to be wrong. Except in that nobel prize in literature in 1962, he reflected on the ancient commission of the writer to expose failures and how it dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement. He thought about these words in recent years as my attention has turned to steinbecks writing as a window onto the western nation in the middle third of the 20th century for the error from the new deal for the Great Society second american age of progressive reform. I entered my own scholarly work as it has been by my admiration for much of activism 1930s and 19. I am confident few people think of me has a magnificent scholar the last three decades writing about the west and american thought moderate prescriptive hardly manifesto expectations western pass can help navigate the difficulties and complexities of the present. Mine has been history is your approach acknowledging our field is not science but conform policy by illuminating actions, processes and consequences. Times is expunging maybes for my work is situated in the realm of moderation that solution. Currently successful. Now i am words and works better in his lifetime should matter now about the west and america that halfcentury since his death. Those words matter and faultlines the divider nation in ways weve not seen since the 1960s. Sensibility of the scholars of the west have help me appreciate steinbecks positive and purposeful contributions to the regional and National Past as well as acknowledge his failings and comes as a guide given my infamous inexpressible passion for writing i might have chosen to use steinbecks writing as a lens to illuminate the twists and turns in our field from the frontier thesis to global frameworks and colonialism. Instead i will highlight aspects of steinbecks life and work mostly from 1935 1940 we flew showing the warriors to both in relation to the 2020 conference theme of migration meeting ground memory in the ancient commission of the writer that he talked about both then and now. In the mid to late 30s steinbeck wrote a series of cale warriors who worked as a government propagandist and a workhorse correspondent overseas. He pervaded the Cultural Landscape from the start of the second new deal to the end of world war ii showing those ten years he published 11 books and seven films based on his writings were released. He was as wellknown and widely read is in the American Writer since mark twain yet steinbeck was hardly revered or appreciated by the arbiters of the literary. During his lifetime critic dismissed his work is overly sentimental and not stylistically intimated. His literary reputation developed a parallel just popular acclaim. Americans read a steinbeck because he articulated the daily striving more effectively and authentically than any writer of his generation. Im drawn to his advocacy for families and the depression years who journeyed for my adoptive state of oklahoma and the rest of the Southern Plains to california. I appreciate the understanding for struggles or food, shelter, health, dignity of those who labor with their hands. Perhaps my own back story explains my affinity. I grew up in workingclass Government Housing in london. There is a single small bookcase with a paperback edition of mice and men was among its contents. That little book spoke to me with the directness Thomas Dickinson thomas hardy could not match steinbecks advocate was him cursive nonetheless it was heartfelt and genuine and on and balance it served as a force for good and still can. As a transplant from another country who sought to find home in various places across america for 35 years, i am drawn to steinbeck as a regionalists who understand the power of attachment to place his value of having the ugly truth of how the most recently read californians sometimes develop their own sense of belonging by dehumanizing even newer arrivals a process of regionalism through reaction that remains alive and well across the west in america. I appreciate steinbeck is a chronicle of place his celebrated the decency and humanity of those on the fringes of society the countercultural type c workers, the developmentally challenge i relish the irony has malcolm described Canterbury Road. Helped create tourist attraction from the rest of shells of tanning factories. I suggest what be known as steinbeck that from sand was in the north down through Monterey County and bounded to the east by the mountains and even stretching further south and east can be re envisioned as a metaphor for remembering progressive ideas and values in the present. Published in january of 1936, steinbecks and dubious battle was the earliest example of his determination to write history while it was happening. He began crafting the number september of 1934, shortly after San Franciscos bilotti thursday. He described the book as a brutal, merely a recording of consciousness judging and nothing simply putting down a thing. The story about strike organizing is almost highly devoid of heroes steinbeck focused just on the consciousness of the workers and the mistreatment my california agribusiness and the local vigilantes the interest mobilized. He adjusted brutality of a communist ideology that justified doom to failure from the start. To the longshoremens and field worker strikes in california, the contemporary context of western American Labor struggles pervades in dubious battle. But migration did not. Three quarters of the workers in the strikes describe mexican but none of steinbecks characters were. We cannot learn about the efforts of the Filipino Labor Union in 1934, affiliated by a single week the precise moment when steinbecks hometown began working on the book affiliated with a white salina vegetable packers association. The mob violence directed in september and the positive resolution of the strike they managed to achieve later that month receive no mention in the novel. Nonetheless, in dubious battle was successful in the wake of its success the San Francisco news invited steinbeck to write a series of articles on the oklahoma families, migrant families who were in california. At this moment his lifework took a turn. His literary talents became more directly to a context corps. Steinbeck met with federal Resettlement Administration officials who wanted him to promote the government fledgling system of signature camps in the state. Steinbeck toured the camps in this San Joaquin Valley and it shocked him out of his neutral observer. As a study of final courses the analysis of ultimate purpose or design is an explanation of human behavior. Emphasize cause and effect relationships that lead to clear resolutions. Steinbeck by contrast was trying to chart solely what is rather than passing judgment on what should be, could be, or might be. Judging nothing and will originally titled simply and non descriptively something that happened. But now steinbeck was moved to anger, and passion advocacy and judgment would servicing the seven articles for the news. The articles appealed in early october 1936 accompanied by langs photograph including one of Florence Owen thompson from the famous migrant mother series. Steinbeck stressed the loss of dignity among migrant families as they became destitute and sick as a result of the labor and conditions. Placing particular emphasis on humane lack of Public Health services described the suffering of one oklahoma couple whose six jeweled dollar daughter was partially blind and the boy died of a burst appendix day after the county hospital failed to provide treatment. He talked about stillborn babies, infant deaths because not malnourished mothers were unable to breastfeed. Mortality in the San Joaquin Valley is to have time the national average. He emphasized Young Children with swollen bellies dying from disease and nutrition related illnesses. Steinbeck also highlight the suffering mothers anguish and despair and the loss of dignity and spirit that he said cut fathers down to a sub humanity. The account is still painful to read and it should be. Steinbeck called out the large agricultural banking and the state including the associated farmers of california as the forces behind the acts of a vigilante and terrorism the beatings, tara and feather in, shootings and employing its migrant labor. He blamed the large farming interest for imposing starving wages and exploiting families with inadequate and overpriced tempera housing and stores. Because of their actions he declared california democracy is rapidly dwindling away and methods are more numerous and powerfully applied more openly practice in california than any other place in the United States. Steinbeck blamed organized private interests working handinhand with state and county governments for the migrant families horrendous conditions. He highlighted the restoration of dignity through the resettlement first to demonstration camps. He advocated for an expansion of the camp system. He offered a roadmap for migrant independence and family security through small parts of land and educational access. He insisted would not be much greater than the amount that is spent to teargas, machine guns, ammunition and deputy sheriffs. However matters of race steinbecks descriptions and prescriptions were less satisfying. He fully recognize the field labor in california have been performed previously by chinese, filipinos, mexicans and japanese. He emphasized the oppression and segregation they suffered. He reminded readers the success of the chinese and then the japanese as Agricultural Producers and made them targets of violence and deportation. Mexican labor efforts to organize had been met with he said vigilante, terrorism, savagery unbelievable and uncivilized state. Steinbeck clearly understood and disavowed the racism and xenophobia that were the bedrock of california agriculture. However, steinbeck also contrasted foreign migrant in the decibel refugees. The racial binders that accompanied his myopia. These newest migrants he said filthy pride of Land Ownership and have the terrible pain sing their lands wither and die. They made the crossing hunt of often seen the death of their children along the way. They where he declared the defendants of pioneers and were not migrants by nature. He insisted with this new race the old methods of repression, starvation wages jailing, beating and simulation are not going to work because these are american people. For all of his impassioned chronicling inhumane workers of color the good White American pioneering of english german scandinavian descent somehow suffered more for had more to lose because of the close attachment to the land more likely or less likely to accept being treated as peons the nonwhite foreign labor was inaccurate and racist. Nonetheless steinbeck was entirely accurate in predicting it will be harder for california agribusiness to subject a white dustbowl refugees to such inhumane conditions and get away with it. The majority of the White American population and its white political representatives would take notice and visit the white on white oppression is unamerican. Steinbecks own efforts and those employed or encouraged by the federal government including lying cap the white migrants in the public eye. Of course thompson, unforgettable face of a White American poverty strength and determination in a langs photograph was actually cherokee woman. That would be not known for most people its more than four decades later. Fall of 1936 to late winter 1938 steinbeck learn more about the conditions Southern Plains migrant families face. His died with tom the manager of the sanitary encampment at bakersfield. Collins a detailed report on migrant culture and form steinbecks understanding of californias newest refugees. Steinbeck traveled to squatter camps and employer owned farm camps with collins and others including life photographer horse bristol helped him appreciate the migrants daily struggles for work, food, health, and safety. During 18 months of research on immersion and, assistance to, and advocacy for southern planes families, steinbeck the new deal democrat became an author. In february steinbeck said to a friend theres 5000 family starving to death in the interior valley. Not just hungry but actually starving. He asked when the government was trying to provide food and medical assistance. But its efforts are being sabotaged by the utilities, banks, huge growers they described as fascist and murderers. He made the trip in late february early march. His experience there helping the migrants prove its a Pivotal Moment in its awakening leading him to declare i want to put a tag of shame on the greedy pastors who are responsible for this. This anger and frustration colored his article, starvation under the orange trees which he concluded with a damning rhetorical question, if you buy a farm horse and only feed him when you work him, the horse will die. Is it possible the state is so , so vicious and so greedy that cannot feed and clothe the men and women who helped to make it the richest area in the world . At the end of may of 1938 steinbeck became the 100 days of writing over five months. He kept a daily journey filled with an excessive urgency, uncertainty and occasional hope is creating a literary work to match the significance of a contemporary private crisis he was chronicling. The challenge was convey the full horrors of the migrants plight while emphasizing the strength, dignity and humanity in the face of desolate poverty and misery breaking to achieve this while illuminating experience through a non lens telling what is nonjudgmentally. This is reflected again and again in the novel jim casey the former preacher who no longer preaches but right up until the moment he slain and gently implores people to act decently toward each other. And tom joad a parolee who killed for the second time was casey reincarnate becomes a living embodiment of best impulses to the brutalized, hungry and downtrodden. His life to a dying stranger after she delivers a stillborn baby. Ending steinbecks deadly Entrance Side entrance steinbeck refused to change giving of the breast is no more than giving of a piece of bread. However steinbecks method did not make him a neutral observer of the events in california. Has unequivocal support for labor it was evident in his letters and john berry San Francisco news column that july. Barry had asked steinbeck if he would participate on a non partisan form of labor and business representatives to the purpose of ending recent strikes. Steinbeck wrote im afraid of that word nonpartisan. He insisted he was completely partisan. Explaining every effort i can bring to bear is and has been at the core of the common working people to the end they may eat what they raise, weve where would they leave you with the produce. As published in april 1939 steinbeck dedicated to his wife karol who wilt this book. She also critiqued, edited, title and typed it. He also dedicated to tom collins who lived it. Steinbeck charted the families displacement, exodus to california and evolving Group Consciousness which is the move for my i to we. This ethics saga survive immediately became a bestseller, refocus the nations attention on the migrants suffering that accentuate the depth of the dream of the far west as a Promised Land. Continuing the theme of mans inhumanity to man, steinbeck captured the contours of racism expressed at home and experience in trying to find home in the meeting grounds of california. He emphasized how their sense of place was formed in part to their experience of conquest and sediment writing grandpa took up the land and he had to kill the indians and dried them away. But when the joads driven away themselves by the banks and tractors reached california they become the new targets as evidence in a casual comment of one attendant to another, has gone down have no sense or feelings they are human human being would not live like them human being could not stand to be so dirty and miserable under miserable they are better than guerrillas. Steinbecks pendant but not steinbecks voice as he highlighted the active regionalism. Steinbecks depiction of the conditions in oklahoma and california led to a backlash from conservative politicians and business interest. Oklahoma critics emphasize the vulgarity, reverent treatment of religion line icing of those who fled rather than those who remained in his depiction of the state as a baron, probably written wasteland all the time when leaders are trying to attract business investment. Congressman lyle born famously to clear the book a lie, a black infernal creation of a twisted distorted mind. California critics projected the depiction of migrant families and working the agribusiness interests and positive treatment of federal efforts to assist them to the camp system. Steinbeck vilified as a liar, a communist and she was deeply troubled by the backlash. Especially by the lies he assisted farmers spread and newspapers they rejected the depiction of them, hated him and wanted to kill him. Newspapers in california publish contrite test testimonials rejecting the novel and emphasizing the good treatment by california growers. California businesses coordinate campaign against the novel amounted to life in the pitting life as he sought to discredit a literary representation of their own repressive action. Steinbeck had predicted as much when he insisted all of the verses in the music to battle him other publicly printed inside the cover of the novel explaining the fascist crowd will try to sabotage this book because it is revolutionary. Adding the battle hymn is american and intensely so will help undermine their efforts to applying the communist label to the book. Literary scholar krystal bowman recently gathered evidence from the newspapers published by the resident of the Farm Security administration cams demonstrate deep appreciation for steinbecks efforts. Those resources demonstrate the novel was a widely read even in t