![]() | The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl Subjects: American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Agriculture in literature; National characteristics American in literature; Citizenship in literature; Race in literature; Nature in literature; Ecocriticism; American literature -- 21st cent; The California farmlands have long served as a popular symbol of America's natural abundance and endless opportunity. Yet, from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Carlos Bulosan's America Is in the Heart to Helena Maria Viramontes's Under the Feet of Jesus , many novels, plays, movies, and songs have dramatized the brutality and hardships of working in the California fields. Little scholarship has focused on what these cultural productions tell us about who belongs in America, and in what ways they are allowed to belong. In The Nature of California , Sarah Wald analyzes this legacy and its consequences by examining the paradoxical representations of California farmers and farmworkers from the Dust Bowl migration to present-day movements for food justice and immigrant rights. Sarah D. Wald is assistant professor of English and environmental studies at the University of Oregon. |
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