in 1936 Steinbeck was approached by a
San Francisco newspaper to write a
series of articles about migrant
farmworkers in California these were the
Depression years in Oklahoma Arkansas
Texas Nebraska and Kansas enormous
numbers of people were being
dispossessed of their small farms
through a combination of bad farming
practices and harsh winds that blew away
the topsoil creating a so-called Dust
Bowl in these regions tens of thousands
of families made the long trek to
California in search of agricultural
work and a better life but their hopes
met a harsh reality as Feinberg drove
down through the Central Valley stopping
at migrant camps along the way he wrote
thousands of them are crossing the
borders and ancient rattling automobiles
destitute and hungry and homeless ready
to accept any page so that they may eat
and feed their children Steinbeck was
startled and outraged by what he saw
whole families living in cardboard boxes
babies were dying from lack of food and
medicine out of this experience
Steinbeck created his great novel The
Grapes of Wrath which awakened the
entire nation's heart and conscience to
the plight of these people
in 1962 John Steinbeck was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature
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