Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Oct 30, 2024 | counterpunch.org | Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Iris Jamahl Dunkle, author of Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb, shares ten intriguing facts about intrepid writer Sanora Babb — peerless author of midcentury American literature and remarkable rebel who challenged the era’s social and political norms. In 1939, when John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation’s collective imagination of the era.

Oct 18, 2024 | electricliterature.com | Emily Van Duyne |Doireann Ní Ghríofa |Jo Lou |Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Whether we like it or not, literary history tends to follow a known path. In high school, we read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, and we are told this is the definitive book about The Dust Bowl. In college, we are introduced to T.S. Eliot’s long poem “The Waste Land” and told that this work is an example of high modernism.

Oct 17, 2024 | lithub.com | Iris Jamahl Dunkle

You might know Sanora Babb as the wife of the Academy Award-winning cinematographer James Wong Howe. She also had many tantalizing affairs with the likes of Ralph Ellison and Harry Stetson (yes, of the hats). And young writers like William Saroyan and Carlos Bulosan were madly in love with her in the 1920s and 30s. It’s hot, right? You want to know more. Article continues after advertisementBut how seriously would you take her if this is how I introduced her to you?

Oct 15, 2024 | salon.com | Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Sanora Babb, who grew up in a dugout farming broomcorn in eastern Colorado, understood what it was like to grow up in poverty. That’s why she was drawn to write about the plight of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who were making their way to California in order to try and find work. In 1935, she began working for Tom Collins with the Farm Security Administration (FSA) at the migrant refugee camps and taking extensive notes for a novel she had begun about the plight of the migrants.

Oct 15, 2024 | flipboard.com | Iris Jamahl Dunkle

2 hours agoThe former House speaker quickly repented. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a new interview revealed why she rarely calls former President Donald Trump by his name. Instead, the former House speaker often refers to Trump ― of whom she is a fierce critic ― as “what’s his name.” Trump is “a grotesque …