Steinbeck’s Migrants: Families on the Move and the Politics of Resource Management

Bryan Yazell
English
UC Davis

The grantee intended to travel to California libraries and universities that contain special collections on the subject of John Steinbeck’s literature in particular and Dust Bowl policy documents more broadly. With these resources, he intended to read Steinbeck’s literature on migrant labor in California in a manner that focused less on his critique of capitalism than on his discursive engagement with official government policy. Although Steinbeck’s representation of migrant labor has been the subject of extensive study, the account offered by the grantee sought to both build on and move beyond what critics have long established as the noveli’s troubling racial politics. Rather, the project argued that Steinbeck imagined the California-bound family on the move as a resource that the state must tap in order to prosper.