214. Sanora Babb — Whose Names Are Unknown with Iris Jamahl Dunkle
KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew, here with my co-host, Amy Helmes.
AMY HELMES: The word "wrath" may pop up at times throughout this episode. We'll be talking a little bit about John Steinbeck's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, but we'll also be talking about the wrath we felt upon learning how Steinbeck's novel edged out today's “lost lady,” Sanora Babb.
KIM: No American writer was more uniquely qualified than Babb to tell the story of the Dust Bowl and the plight of the migrant farmers who journeyed to California. Whose Names Are Unknown, the novel on this subject she spent years working on, was slated for publication in 1939. But Steinbeck's novel, written hastily in less than six months, beat hers to publication and became an instant bestseller.
AMY: Did we mention he used Babb's notes and research to write The Grapes of Wrath? In a devastating about-face, Babb's publisher shelved her manuscript. "Rotten luck," he told her, acknowledging that Steinbeck had already written the definitive “Dust Bowl” novel, so hers wasn't needed.
KIM: But did Steinbeck really get the story right? Our guest today, the author of a brand new biography on Sanora Babb, wants to set the record straight and introduce you to Babb’s masterpiece, which was finally and rightfully published in 2004 (that's 70 years after she started writing it) mere months before her death at age 98.
AMY: Better late than never, I'll say, because this book packs quite an emotional punch. I feel like I already knew all of the Dust Bowl history, especially having read The Grapes of Wrath, but no. You don't really know everything until you've read this book.
KIM: Exactly, and I can't wait to talk about it all, so let's rate the stacks and get started!
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KIM: Today's guest, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, is a three-time returning guest to this program, having first joined us to discuss the subject of her fantastic 2020 biography, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer.
AMY: Iris joined us again last year to discuss “lost lady” Janet Lewis's novel, The Wife of Martin Guerre. We had a fun time pretending we were in an episode of “Law & Order” in that one, which is episode No. 152, if you want to go back and have a listen. A former poet laureate of Sonoma County, Iris also published a 2021 poetry collection called West: Fire: Archive, and we're delighted to be helping her celebrate the release of her latest biography out today from University of California Press. It's called Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb.
KIM: And listeners, we actually have an in-person event scheduled for tonight, October 15th. Amy and I will be joining Iris at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena at 7 p. m. for a conversation on Sanora Babb and her connection to Los Angeles. So if you live in the area, come hang out with the three of us and pick up a signed copy of Iris's book. We would absolutely love to meet some listeners out there. So don't be shy, swing by. And Iris, congratulations on the book. We're so happy it's finally here. Yay!
IRIS JAMAHL DUNKLE: Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be back with you guys!
AMY: Okay, so the facts that we just spelled out in our introduction are enough to make me want to close my eyes and count to 10 to just calm myself. I don't want to paint John Steinbeck as a villain in this episode; he's not. And I loved The Grapes of Wrath when I originally read it. I think his intentions in writing that novel were really noble. But, the fact remains, the world knows The Grapes of Wrath, and almost no one knows Sanora Babb's Whose Names Are Unknown. So Iris, tell us, when did you first learn that there was an alternative story out there?
IRIS: Well, I first learned about, Sanora Babb's book through Ken Burns's documentary, The Dust Bowl. So he does a really good job of incorporating the story of Sanora Babb and her version of the Dust Bowl in that documentary. But I also read The Grapes of Wrath in high school, and my family came over from the Dust Bowl. My grandmother came from Oklahoma. And I was really excited when I read it, and I ran home to call my grandmother and tell her and I was like, "Grandma, they wrote a book about us.!" And she was like, "That is not what it was like. Don't ever talk to me about Steinbeck again." And I couldn't understand why she was so mad. It had a lot to do with the way that Steinbeck had depicted the people of the Dust Bowl, you know, as victims. And she didn't like someone else telling her story, especially in that way, which gave her no agency.
KIM: Listeners, we're going to give you a fuller picture of how Babb's novel was almost resigned to oblivion as a result of Steinbeck's success. And we're going to talk about some similarities and differences between the two novels. But first, Iris, why don't you go ahead and describe Babb's book and the significance of the title, Whose Names Are Unknown.
IRIS: So the name, Whose Names Are Unknown, was based on an eviction notice that Babb saw on a decrepit workers' shack when she was working with the migrant workers. And it was on a corporate farm, she noticed that it said: "To John Doe and Mary Doe, whose true names are unknown." And she thought that really kind of embodied the way that the Okies were thought about during this time period, you know. All the corporate farmers, all of the political leaders, no one saw these people as human beings. And it was really important to her and her work to show not only who these people were during their time of tragedy, right after the Dust Bowl has happened and they've had to escape to California, but she also wanted to show them before. Before the disaster happened. I mean, if any of you have known someone that something terrible has happened to (you know, I come from Sonoma County, so we've had some horrible wildfires) and if you met someone the day that they lost everything, they would be a different person than if you knew them six months before. And so the brilliance of Babb's novel is it's in two parts. The first part is set in the Oklahoma panhandle, and we get to know Milt and his family. And we see them living with Konkie, Milt's father, in a dugout. And they're struggling, but they love the land. They're putting in new crops. And then you see slowly, as the weather starts to change, as the Dust Bowl starts to come, and everyone around them starts to suffer, and you see how it's affecting the entire community, so that when they actually have to leave for California, you know they have no other choice. And so your compassion is with them every step of the way.
AMY: Absolutely. The emotional investment. When I started reading this novel, I think I messaged you right away, and I was like, I'm like, "I'm gonna need a moment to recover." It is so intense. It's so staggeringly good. But it's really big emotion, right?
IRIS: Yeah, definitely. And you can really feel how connected Babb is to the characters. Like, she not only knew the people living in the camps, but she knew the people that they were before. Her mother was living in Garden City at the time that some of the biggest Dust Bowl weather events came through. And she kept a diary, and so Chapter 17 is actually these diary entries edited. And we see the Dust Bowl as it's slowly progressing in a single month, like how it's affecting Milt and Julia and their family.
AMY: Can we read some of that, maybe?
IRIS: I would love to. So this is from the point of view of Julia and this is about halfway through the first half of the book. Previous to this chapter, Julia said, "We're never leaving. We're never going to leave."
And then this is when it starts to change:
April 4. A fierce, dirty day. Just able to get here and there for things we have to do. It is awful to live in a dark house with the windows boarded up and no air coming in everywhere. Everything is covered and filled with dust. April 5th, today is a terror.
April 6th, let up a little.
We can see the fence but can't see any of the neighbors' houses yet. No trip to town today. Funny how we learn to get along even in this dust.
April 7, a beautiful morning. Everyone's spoiling the happiness of a clear day by digging dust. Sunday afternoon, we walk for miles to see other places. It was a sight.
It looks like the desert you read about in books. Desolation itself. The day began and ended as a real sunshiny western day.
April 8th morning, bright and skies clear. 10 o'clock dirt began to show up around the edges by noon, the sky and air full. We try to do our work as usual, thinking rain may fall and end our troubles for a while.
We don't speak much of the wheat anymore. Going to bed. Dirt still blowing.
AMY: Okay, this whole section with the diary... we never learned this! I knew the Dust Bowl, the dust came… I just thought it was storms. I had no idea. I didn't understand the ramifications and how literally, they're drowning! It's getting in their lungs. It's seeping through every crack in the house. It's getting in their food. It's killing their animals. It's like a horror movie!
KIM: I know. Amy, I had no idea either! I lived in Texas for eight years when I was a kid and there were some dust storms. Nothing like this. Like, until I read this, I had no idea either. And with the diary format too, it takes you right into it. You can actually feel what that must have been like. And it is horrifying.
IRIS: Yeah. It is. It's, you know, it was really visceral. When I was at the Harry Ransom Center researching this book, they have a lot of her physical belongings, including one of the dust masks that people wore during that time period. And this is like during COVID, so I'm wearing a mask, looking at her mask and it's just, it felt so visceral because we had already been through so many disasters as a society. Like, I think that's why this really speaks to people right now is because it's what's called “disaster lit,” right? It's about how human beings survive something like this.
AMY: And yeah, brief momentary pauses of sunshine when the storm has settled and you're like, "Okay, maybe it's done," and you get a little excited and a little happy, and then it's like, "Nope." Four hours later, it's back again. Terror is the only word I can think of to describe what they were going through.
KIM: So my grandparents, both of them, were impacted by the Dust Bowl and I didn't even know. And I loved my grandparents, I just didn't really connect it and they didn't talk about it.
IRIS: I mean, they were traumatized.
KIM: Exactly. Like, to be able to say, "Oh, wow, you went through this," and be able to, you know, talk about with them and hear their experiences. I just wish so badly that I could have. And I feel proud, actually, that I came from that. It's like, oh, some of the strong things I've been able to do in life, I look at, well, I came from very strong stock. And reading this book has made me just have a different feeling about my ancestors.
IRIS: I love that. That really makes me happy. I mean, that's part of the reason why it's so important to have a book like this as part of the educational system. So growing up when I read in high school, The Grapes of Wrath, that's how I was to think of my ancestors,
KIM: I didn't wanna be Okie! Yeah. I didn't wanna be called an Okie. I wanted to be associated with something completely different, and I think that's why I probably didn't ask them to, you know, it was a negative and you didn't want to be called that or thought of that.
IRIS: Oh yeah. We couldn't say that word in our house.
KIM: Totally. Totally. Yeah.
AMY: When you said your grandmother, she didn't want to be seen as a victim... you see that in this novel really clearly, that these people don't want to ask for help. They're not looking for a handout. They're not looking for anything extra. They're just trying to survive.
KIM: Yeah. Hard working people, so to take a handout for them is completely antithetical to what they would want.
AMY: And speaking of grandparents, I love the character of the grandfather in this book. His nickname is Konkie, and he's actually based on Babb's own grandfather. She draws from a lot of her own family life in this novel, right?
IRIS: Yes. so Babb was born in Kansas because her grandmother didn't want her to be born in Oklahoma, which was still not a state in 1907. But soon thereafter, they moved to Eastern Colorado because Konkie, her grandpa, had gotten a land grant and built a dugout. And they all lived in this little dugout, farming broom corn. And so she lived in a very small space with lots of people, living from crop to crop. Uh, they were very poor. And, Konkie was just this character that really helped Sanora Babb become who she was in her life. Like he was somebody that didn't really follow the rules. He had been a drinker when he was younger. He had lost his wife when she died in childbirth, and he turned to drinking. And then when he moved to Eastern Colorado, he gave up drinking and would just go on these long walkabouts eating hardtack. And she would go with him. And he was really close to the land, and even though he couldn't really leave his surroundings very much, he taught her how to leave. And that was really the gift that he gave her.
KIM: My grandfather is Konkie, or rather, was Konkie. Like, he was the sweetest guy, but also didn't talk much. I remember I used to pretend to be asleep so he would carry me to bed. I loved him so much. And reading Konkie, I actually felt a connection to my grandfather again. I loved that character.
AMY: He was really sweet in the book.
IRIS: I love that.
KIM: Yeah.
AMY: So at a very young age, Babb starts writing. Working for her little local newspapers and kind of interning there, learning the ropes, learning how to write from mentors. She's writing poetry also, and she's submitting it out to literary magazines, things like that. And she starts gaining national attention, actually, and winds up earning the nickname “The Poet of the Prairies.” Iris, you're a poet yourself. Do you see that poetic influence in this work?
IRIS: Oh, definitely. I mean, she was able to use the idea of the lyric sense as a way to describe things like hunger. So in the second part of the book, when Milt's family finally gets into one of the government camps and is, um, you know, slowly getting help — it takes a little while for the help to kick in, you know. — they're starving in their tents. And so she writes this passage in the second half of the book where Milt is, wandering around. He's just witnessed this horrible birth. Um, a woman goes into labor in a tent on a dirt floor, and so he's just wandering around after this and she writes this passage about what he felt like.
Suddenly he heard the small picks and tings of an orchestra tuning up, then a burst of gay music. Unbelieving, he looked towards the tent the sound came from and through the wide flaps pinned back, he saw a boy about 11 standing by a huge bass fiddle, seeming to pound the strings with a small right hand, bringing forth grave and wonderful notes.
Below him on the bed sat another boy, about nine, strumming a mandolin. A young girl with her back to the door was playing a violin. Deep in the dusk of the tent, a man played a banjo. Over and through it all, the heavy somber strings throbbed like a great heart. They finished the piece and played another, and toward the last they sang, faint, childish voices, blending in delicate harmony.
They played on, not resting, and Milt watched the small boy's pliant hand rising and falling on the responsive strings. He felt the dizziness again, swinging across his eyes and through his ears in time with the music. He walked across the square, hearing the flag on the tall pole flapping in the wind. He thought of the woman lying on the ground with her tense face, looking up at him through the dimness.
He thought of Lonnie, sleeping all day to forget her hunger. He thought of Julia and Mrs. Starwood forgetting theirs. He thought of the carrots tomorrow, the weeds in the carrots. He thought of Friday and surplus commodities. His mind was clear and light like air. Music wafted through it like a feather. He felt very tall.
His broken shoes whispered in the soft dirt far below. Lonnie sleeping Friday. Weeds. Carrots. Three feet wide. A woman screaming. Quarter of a mile tomorrow. Surplus commodities. Walking. Music. Water. Running. Forgetting. Forty cents a day. Sleeping, forgetting, forty cents, floating like air, clear water running, sparkling through the brain, surplus brain, commodities, sleeping, a feather of music tickling.
This is my tent, sitting down like a cloud, floating, music, faces, fluffy sound in my ears, flying away.
KIM: Absolutely stunning,
AMY: His thoughts are swirling. The responsibility is all on him, and it's all encircling him like what the hell is my life right now?
IRIS: Yes.
KIM: And can I just say something, like, you talked about it being “disaster lit?” And it's relevant, not just in the fact that we have gone through a pandemic, but to me thinking about immigration and camps globally, and what it's like for people to live in that kind of experience. There are people who are living like that right now, and we can impact their lives by some of the choices we make. That was right there with me while I was reading that, especially that second half of the book about California.
IRIS: I think that's because it's so humanized. There's so much written about people who are going through the worst parts of their lives which makes them look like victims, and you don't feel compassion in the same way for someone when you don't know their backstory.
KIM: Exactly. Exactly.
AMY: The music, the kids playing the instruments, it's like they're still trying to find ways to make life normal. They're still trying to find community in this harrowing, awful setup that they're in.
KIM: Yeah. It makes Milt feel human again, almost.
IRIS: Yeah. And that's based on an actual band that was at one of the camps she was working at. There's photographs of it in the Harry Ransom Center.
KIM: Okay.
AMY: That's another thing I wanted to point out too. I'm reluctant when we do books like this that we're recommending that we're like, "It's this awful time, and so many hideous, heinous things happen to them, and you're going to be crying." And then it's like, well, I don't know that I really want to read that book that I just described. But it's a hopeful story for humanity, I think, by the end of the book.
KIM: That's exactly right, Amy. I'm glad you said that. As they're dealing with all these things, there's still joy in there and hope.
AMY: But yeah, there is a lot of heartache too, and so many indelible moments that are just kind of seared on your brain after reading it. So without giving away any major spoilers, let's talk about a few of the things that kind of spring to mind for us. The one thing that I always think back on in this book is the little detail of the pepper tea or the pepper soup. These little girls are starving, and the mom, Julia, has nothing to offer them, but she's like, "Okay, I'm going to boil some water, and I'm going to put pepper (I don't know if it's black pepper, or pepper plant, or what it is) I'm going to try to flavor this water, and we're going to call it soup, or tea, or whatever." It just shows you the extent of their starvation.
IRIS: It's actually red pepper. So if you've ever done a fast, people have you drink like water with red pepper and I don't know what else is in it. Cause I don't, fast, but..
AMY: So cayenne pepper, basically.
IRIS: Yeah. Cayenne pepper. Yeah. Yeah. So it kind of makes your body feel like it's doing something, but it's not. That's based on Babb's own experience. They went over a week without food one time, and her mom was so desperate to keep them alive, she kept feeding them pepper tea. And so she was writing from experience on that.
KIM: That's incredible. Wow.
AMY: What about you, Kim? What moments from the book?
KIM: There's so many. Um, I think, the way Julia works so hard to clean the house in between the dust storms, and the layers of dust that she's dealing with, but that she doesn't give up. Uh, I think that really stayed with me.
AMY: The futility of it…
KIM: The futility, but it's like, she just won't give up. With that and the pepper tea, I think they're similar in that she's trying to keep that feeling of a home and care in the only way she can. There's so little that they're able to do for their children, you know, they can't go to school. They send them home from school because of the storms. They don't have enough food, but she's trying to clean the house and feed them in the only way she can. And to me that is just so emotional.
IRIS: Yeah. I think that's part of what Babb gets right so well in this book is she brings in the point of view of women and children. You know, for me, one of the moments that really sticks with me is when the kids are talking about what it feels like to be called an “Okie,” when they're living in California and they're just sitting there kind of talking about it, And then there's a chapter later, the kids are looking at a bug and the point of view has changed and they have power over the bug and, it's just really an interesting way for us to experience the helplessness that the children are feeling, in inner imagery. Again, it's our poetic devices that are just thrilling in this book.
AMY: Yeah. I'm also thinking of the meeting that the men hold when they're trying to figure out what are we gonna do, and she funnels so many different national issues into this conversation that help explain where things went wrong for them and how they were failed. I thought it was brilliantly done because they're kind of arguing, in the midst of trying to come up with a solution for what they're going to do for their families, but it made me realize, okay, it's not just Nature that has turned on these poor farmers, right? It's all these institutions that have betrayed them too, and that's what that conversation reveals. So, you know, the big banks, the farming conglomerates, the government, I think Babb even has critiques of organized religion throughout this book. Um, there was one line that really struck me like a sarcastic line. I don't know if one of the characters says it or Babb just writes it, but it's "the meek shall inherit the dearth." She's really weighing in on a lot of the root causes for the problem.
KIM: Yeah. The scene where the woman goes to the bank, and the face-off with the bank manager. It was an incredible scene. You're just cheering for the woman trying to stand up for herself with nothing, coming in there and standing up to the banks. And it circles back to your point about realizing all the other people that were involved in the problem that happened there, you know. It wasn't just Nature. It was what was going on that caused Nature to react like that. I mean, climate change, but also the way, um, institutions serve or don't serve solutions for this.
IRIS: Totally. And going back to that chapter with all the farmers meeting, they're at a funeral, right? And it feels like a Greek Chorus almost, because it's kind of like filtering through all of the information. She is kind of setting up what's going to happen later in the text. I really love how she has that element. Actually, when Ralph Ellison read this book (he was a reader for her) he loved that aspect of it. And he loved the way that she included this idea of childbirth and stillbirth and all of these like metaphoric things that were happening to them.
KIM: Yes.
IRIS: The craft in that.
KIM: Yeah. Women have such a huge role to play in this novel. And there are, like you said, the scenes of childbirth. Milk plays a huge symbolic role. And you could draw similarities between that and the ending of The Grapes of Wrath. But it also made me think of our discussion last fall on Meridel Le Seuer's The Girl.
AMY: Yeah, milk factors into that novel as well. Babb and Le Seuer knew each other, right?
IRIS: Oh, yeah. Meridel Le Seuer really loved how Babb always gave women agency, no matter what situation they were in. And she famously told her "You should write shamelessly about women." Like you should always write about women. She's like, "Oh, and by the way, you should read Margery Latimer," who you guys have done an episode on!
KIM: Yeah. Totally, yep!
AMY: It's all coming together. That's great.
KIM: And that actually takes me back to the conversation about the bank, because she doesn't have a man go into the bank and deal with the bank manager. She has a woman go in, and it makes the scene even stronger.
IRIS: Totally.
KIM: So, Babb could deeply relate to people living in the migrant camps because she was actually there among them. Can you talk a little bit, Iris, about her involvement in these migrant camps?
IRIS: Sure. So she had just returned, uh, she went on a trip through Russia, being led by Intourist,, who were like giving her a propaganda view, right? Like, "Stalin's great!" She couldn't see what was actually going on.
AMY: Disneyland Stalin. Yeah.
KIM: Yeah.
IRIS: “Look at our beautiful model farms!” Right? And everybody's starving in the background. But it gave her the idea that maybe there would be a possible way to save American farmers. And so when she came back, she was really adamant about finishing this novel she'd started, which is about the plight of what was happening in the Dust Bowl. She would visit her mother. She'd go to these towns that she grew up in, and just see them devastated. And she just couldn't believe that there was no solution out there. So she reached out to Tom Collins, who was the one who established all of the migrant camps up and down California, and offered to work for him, and started writing articles about all of the migrants living in the camps, but also going around trying to encourage them. So during her time there, she worked with 472 families. And as Tom Collins added it up, that was, 2,175 men, women, and children that she met with to try to, you know, help them. So she really knew the people that she was working with. She spent her days helping the refugees do, you know, the menial tasks that they needed to do in the camps. Like she helped them figure out how to get clean water, how to get government help, but she also helped organize them into, you know, writing a newsletter, or self governing, and helped them feel their sense of worth again. And so they really connected with her, and any photograph you see of her in the camps, they're all circled around her and she's like one of them. And so it's in that environment that she wrote this book. She would go into her tent late at night and type pages. And you can feel that essence in it, that sense of community that she feels.
AMY: And that she's listened to all their stories, and she's kind of collating them into this book. And this is kind of where John Steinbeck enters the picture, so let's get into that now. How did he get involved in sort of borrowing her research?
IRIS: So Steinbeck was friends with Tom Collins, and he had visited the camp several times before. Every time he visited, none of the migrants would know that he was John Steinbeck. He went under a false name, which is really interesting. But it was during one of his visits in May, 1938, when he was struggling to write this Dust Bowl novel, like he had already written two versions of The Grapes of Wrath and thrown them out. And he was just about to begin the final version that would become The Grapes of Wrath, and it was a sunny day, and he and Tom Collins and Babb went to a cafe. You know, they had conversations about what was going on and then she handed him her field notes, which, you know, she didn't think anything of. And those really inspired him. When you look at both of their books, you can see where those field notes inspired what he wrote. And she didn't realize when she handed those notes that it would make it so that her own novel would not get published. Um, even though it was at the time it was under contract with Random House.
KIM: In the film, if there were a film about this, this is a big moment. You just see her handing over those notes, it's like, "Aaaaaghhh!"
IRIS: Yeah, I mean, in, in her own words, she said (this is like a later reflection) she said, "Tom Collins had asked me to keep detailed notes of our work every day of the people, things they said, did, suffered, worked. I thought it was our work, for him, but it was for Steinbeck. And Tom asked me to give him my notes. I did. Naive me.”
KIM: Et tu, Brute, oh my god, whoa.
IRIS: I know.
KIM: So, let's talk a little bit about what Steinbeck got wrong, corresponding with what Babb got right.
IRIS: So, I mean, what Steinbeck got wrong is the fact that he did not approach these people as people. He had met some of these people, he made composite characters, but The Grapes of Wrath is really more of an epic story. It's like a myth of a story, whereas Sanora Babb's story is about real people, you know, it's about the people that are actually struggling. And that difference, really, is exactly what we've been talking about in this conversation, right? That book is used to represent the Dust Bowl in our country and in classrooms across the United States. Everyone experiences the Dust Bowl through The Grapes of Wrath. I'm only saying that if we just brought in Babb’s version of the Dust Bowl, then we would actually see another fictional version that kind of opens it up to look at it more at the human level.
KIM: And closer to factual maybe because she did more research than he did.
IRIS: Exactly. I mean, Steinbeck had never even really been to Oklahoma. He'd driven through once in his roadster with his wife. But he'd never really gone there and done the research. And even his research in the camps was secondary, right? It was through other people. He didn't really have much of a stomach for what he was seeing when he was there. I mean, he felt deeply about it, but he was so disturbed by seeing these people suffering so much that he just kind of popped in and out. Whereas Babb was in it every single day, and I think you see that at the sentence level in this book.
AMY: And it just makes me think again of that eviction notice, "John and Mary Doe." It's like his book is John and Mary Doe, whereas she goes in and says what their real names are, you know, and she actually explores who they really were. And weren't the migrants, um, when his book came out, didn't they feel a little betrayed by Tom Collins and the fact that they had been used in a way?
IRIS: Yes. And not to mention the people in the Dust Bowl area were like, "Oh, uh-uh!" They hated The Grapes of Wrath when it came out. There was a huge pushback against it. That's forgotten in history, but yes, a lot of people, including my grandmother, did not like the book.
KIM: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I wish I could ask my grandma now. My grandma was spicy, so I'm sure she would have something to say about that.
IRIS: I think you had to be spicy to survive that time.
KIM: Exactly.
AMY: I know I'm just like bringing up another random thing from the book, there's so much I want to say about it. But there's an old man that's literally dying in the tent. He's not gonna make it. And the camp, the farm, um, decides to evict him. And they literally lay this almost-dead guy out on the ground with his belongings. Just the cruelty of that. And the game was rigged! " We're only gonna pay you if you make the certain quota," which was impossible to make, like 900 pounds of whatever the crop was that they were supposed to pick. And it was literally, you could not do that in a day. And they were still trying.
KIM: And they were charging them. They made the store very expensive. So they were negative at the end of the week. I mean, it just makes you think about migrant workers today.
AMY: Yeah, it's still happening.
KIM: Yeah, exactly,
IRIS: It’s happening today. And I think the people running those corporate farms did not see these people as human in the same way that, still, migrant workers are treated in that way. And, you know, I was writing this book at the same time that all of the border issues were escalating, and I teach this book a lot, you know, when I teach. My students were just like, "Oh my God, this is still happening," and I think that's what's so haunting about Babb's book is that when you read it, especially, you know, reading it in California, and a lot of my students come from families that are impacted or somehow related to migration or people who have come to work in the fields in California and they see themselves in this book. They see their families in this book, and they see how little we've learned from the time this book was written.
AMY: And Babb didn't just focus on the people coming from the Dust Bowl area as well, right? She acknowledges migrants coming from Mexico or Black workers there. Like she kind of spreads it to include more groups of people, right?
IRIS: Right. I mean, California has always been a multicultural place, and what she depicts in this book reflects that, you know? She's got Filipinos working in the fields, Japanese working in the fields, there's Indigenous people. And also the issue of segregated camps, like, coming together for a strike, like what that means to both of them, right? What's on the line for both of them? These issues come up, and you can see the influence of, you know, when, like I said, Ralph Ellison, when he read this, he was like, "Thank you. And lean into that more."
KIM: Yeah, and the way that she weaves what's happening politically and in capitalism throughout the book, it's not like you're being lectured at. It seems very real. Um, and the little farmers being taken over by these corporations, and they just have someone out there managing it who's not connected to the people or the land.
AMY: That's still happening, too.
KIM: It's even more so that way now, So getting back to Babb's story, you know, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath comes out. It's an instant success. And like we said, her publisher, who she had had a contract with, they were fully planning to put her book out. She was done writing hers, she was ready for it to go, pretty much, um, tells her, "Nevermind, we're not gonna publish it." But lest we think that was her one shot and she missed it, she was very esteemed as a writer. She was very well connected in the literary world and she did have other books that were published, right?
IRIS: Yeah. So after not getting this published, after having the contract taken away by Random House, she was devastated. She spent like a year where she couldn't even write. But then she got right back at it. Um, she got another contract from Random House and started writing her next novel, which is called The Lost Traveler, which is an amazing novel, um, with a strong female character named Robin. It's a coming of age novel, um, she's growing up in a small town based on Garden City, Kansas, and it's like coming into sexuality, coming into being something other than a part of a really dysfunctional family. She also published a great deal of short fiction. She was most known for her short fiction in her lifetime, and they're brilliant short stories. But her, um, memoir An Owl On Every Post is about growing up in Eastern Colorado, and Konkie plays a huge role in that book. I really urge listeners to, to read that book or listen to the audio book. It's just a beautiful book about what it was like growing up in the early 1900s in Eastern Colorado. I wanted to mention too, that she was in a writing group with Ray Bradbury for 40 years, and he thought she was one of the best writers that he'd ever read. And she had, you know, amazingly close literary friendships with Carlos Bulosan, John Fante, William Soroyan, who was in love with her. She had a relationship with Ralph Ellison, like I said. She drove cross country with Tillie Olsen and was good friends, like I said, with Meridel Le Seuer.
AMY: That cross-country road trip is a really great part of your book. I had fun reading that. There were a lot of tensions.
KIM: So let's talk a little bit about why Sanora got so forgotten over time, and what sparked her recovery?
IRIS: You know, this is a story you've heard a lot before on this podcast, right? Women who were writing and publishing in the 1930s, after World War II and the Red Scare, guess who got erased from the story of American literature? The women. And even from biographies, if you look at biographies about William Saroyan, for example, she's not in his biographies at all. There's copious letters between the two. Same thing with Ralph Ellison. Like when you look at the relationship that they had, only one set of letters was available at the time, and so the version of their relationship is really a one sided male perspective of looking at the story, whereas they had a really equal relationship. They respected one another. I mean, she actually read a draft of Invisible Man before it was published. Even when you read biographies about Ray Bradbury, you don't see as much about her. And it's just the way that we look through history through this past century because of the way it was disrupted so many times. It's actually one of the things that scares me the most about the future is if things continue the way they are, with books being banned, with things happening in this way, not to get political, but –
KIM: Get political. I've been thinking about it all through this conversation, to be honest.
IRIS: Yeah, I'm so worried about what that means for the, you know… A, the story we're just beginning to open back up... that both of us have, you know, come from families that survived the Dust Bowl and did not know the details of what happened tells you a lot about this country.
AMY: And can we just real quick give a Ken Burns shout out, because when it came out, I watched that documentary and it's phenomenal. But Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan the fact that they use Sanora for their research for that documentary is pretty amazing.
IRIS: Do you want to know why? Let me tell you. I think it's a really important part of the story. So they are amazing. I was really lucky to get to talk to Dayton Duncan and he played a huge role in the epilogue that I wrote for this book. But the reason why her story is there has everything to do with Pauline Hodges. Now, Pauline Hodges is somebody that my friend, Joanne Dearcopp, who was Sanora Babb's very good friend, who is the reason why Sanora Babb's books are in print, because she made a vow to her over glasses of wine, "I'll keep your books in print, I promise." And then kept her promise, so Joanne was giving me all these names of people I should visit to write this book. And so I'm driving around Eastern Colorado and the panhandle of Oklahoma. She's like, "You got to go to this nursing home and talk to Pauline Hodges." And I'm like, "Okay, all right, I'll do it." So I go and I meet Pauline, and she's a firecracker. And she's just like, knows everybody in town, is hooking me up with everything. I take her back to her nursing home at the end of the day, and I'm like, "Thank you so much," and she's like, "Hey, does Ken Burns know about this project?" And I was like, "No, of course not." (Right? Like, why would he?) And she's like, "Oh, well I'll give him a call." And I'm like, "Okay." You know, and I'm driving back to my hotel in Colorado, and by the time I get back, there's a call from Pauline and she's like, "I talked to Ken's people and they're going to be in contact." What I didn't know at that time is that she was on the set. She's one of the people interviewed in The Dust Bowl documentary. So if you go back, you can see her. And they were all having these meetings, and she's just not somebody that sits on her hands. She was like, "Um, I really think, Ken, that you should look at this woman, Sanora Babb. She went to my high school." So she is the one that introduced Sanora Babb to Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, and of course they did a deep dive into her and made that editorial decision, but the way that Ken Burns and his team do that work, and the thing that Dayton Duncan told me in the interview is like, they know that history is something that is constantly needing to be rewritten and better understood. I think that's why we love their documentaries so much. It's because they're willing to open up and change as they tell a story.
KIM: That's a great point. It's not a regurgitation. They're looking at how they can see it in a new way. And they're willing to listen.
IRIS: It's so important.
KIM: That's huge.
AMY: I always said working for Ken Burns would be my dream job.
KIM: Oh my god, you would be great at that. I could totally see that.
AMY: I just want to work for Ken Burns.
KIM: Yeah.
IRIS: Call Pauline. She'll get you hooked up.
AMY: Pauline, give me the hook up! Okay, so, Sanora Babb, thankfully, she did live long enough to see Whose Names Are Unknown get published. She died in 2005, and there are really so many more stories about her that we haven't… we've run out of time. We can't touch on here. So listeners, you'll just have to pick up a copy of Iris's book. It's called Riding Like the Wind. Um, but Iris, if you had one more thing that you could tell our listeners about Sanora Babb, what would you want it to be?
IRIS: I would say one of the things that struck me most about Sanora Babb was her fortitude. So the idea that she grew up really poor, raised by a man who was a gambler and abusive. And she fought like hell until she got what she wanted and kept her eye on the prize. Like no matter what got in her way, she believed that she could be something. It wasn't like a self-centered desire to become a writer. It was because she knew people needed to have their stories told. I feel so lucky that I've gotten to spend the last five years with her and that she's now in my brain, and hopefully that I've recreated her close to what she was, but her fortitude is something that I'll always carry with me. And I hope other women and men will be inspired by her.
AMY: She spent her writing career making sure people's stories were told, and now finally she gets her story told, thanks to you and your biography, the first biography about Sanora, right?
IRIS: Yeah. It's the first biography about her.
KIM: And we are so lucky that we got to have this discussion with you, and we are so excited to continue it tonight in person at Vroman's Bookstore, which we love Vroman's Bookstore. Thank you for the work you've done to bring Babb's life story and her published works to light. This has been fantastic.
IRIS: Thank you guys so much. It's always such a pleasure to talk with you guys.
AMY: So that's all for today's episode. Angelinos, we hope to see you tonight at Vroman's bookstore to learn more about Sanora Babb. I'll be back with the show next week for all of our paid subscribers. I'm going to be discussing the calamitous, disastrous, apocalyptic effects of bobbing one's hair in that episode.
KIM: Yeah! All right!
AMY: If you think the dust storms were bad, wait till you hear what a bunch of flappers did to society. And then Kim and I will both be back in two weeks to discuss another Lost Lady of Lit. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.