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, ...
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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 Duanne 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.
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New. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 240 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
New. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 240 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Sonora Babb's novel "Whose Names are Unknown" is set in the Dust Bowl in the Oklahoma panhandle during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Dust Bowl and Babb's novel have long histories. With the Dust Bowl, many Oklahoma farmers moved from the panhandle to California, abandoning their homes. Babb (1907 -- 2005) witnessed first hand both Oklahoma farmers during the Dust Bowl and their migration to California. She grew up in a poor Oklahoma family and served during the 1930s for the Farm Security Administration in California. "Whose Names are Unknown" was her first novel which was accepted for publication and then shelved with the publication and success of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath". Babb continued to write novels, stories and poetry and was politically active in Left-leaning causes, including membership in the Communist Party for a number of years. Her first novel finally was published in 2004 but received the attention it deserved only after it was included in a 2012 Ken Burns show on the Dust Bowl.
The novel is highly particularized and intimate with Babb writing in a lyrical, poetic, and descriptive style. The novel tells the story of the Dunne family in Cimarron County, Oklahoma and its valiant efforts over several years to survive the Dust Bowl before leaving for California. The first part of the book takes place in Oklahoma and features extended descriptions of the dust storms. The story also explores the lives of the characters, men and women, adults and children crowded together in a small room trying to survive and make ends meet. The Dunne's interact with other farm families, most of them poor, but some well-off, as well as with townspeople, including the grocer who extends credit and the bankers who hold mortgages. The story includes an elderly grandfather, and several women who hope to better themselves through education and to marry and have a loving sexual relationship.
The second part of the book is set in California with little attention paid to the journey from Oklahoma. The Dunnes and their companions seek work in migrant camps and again are faced with hardship, poverty, and exploitation. The story culminates in a lengthy labor strike by the migrants against a large landowning corporation. Again, the broad aspects of the story are interwoven with the personal lives of the characters. The story has a heavy political tone of protest but it is more. It is convincing through its writing and through its focus on characters.
The book still often is compared to Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" which delayed its publication for many years. It has been a long time since I have read Steinbeck, but his novel is much longer and has an epic sweep while "Whose Names are Unknown" is particularized and individualized. Babb's book stands on its own. I loved it for its simplicity, emotion, and lyricism. It tells the story of good people who struggle and suffer through no fault of their own. It is fortunate that the novel was preserved and published. There is ample room for more than one great novel about the Dust Bowl and the Depression.
