The Culture of California
The statewide reading effort was largely driven by the support of over 200 public libraries across the state that organized programs dedicated to the novel. While discussions of the novel itself were the primary emphasis of the initiative, the scope of programs attempted to reach a variety of age groups and ethnic backgrounds. The approach is evident in the ‘Reading of the Grapes of Wrath’ schedule at the Sacramento Public Library where teen book discussion groups were organized under the title of ‘John Steinbeck: Rebel with a Cause.’ The Hanford branch of the Kings County Library held bilingual film viewings and book discussions with the aid of a Spanish-speaking facilitator (California Council for the Humanities 2003a). Even corporate sponsors, like Penguin Books, contributed to the effort by issuing the first Spanish-language edition of the novel (California Council for the Humanities 2002b.)
The novel was also used to segue into the broader topic of the California agricultural migrant experience as well as more general past and contemporary minority experience. At the Paso Robles Library, the Spanish-language speaker and discussant, Miguel Espino, focused upon his experiences as a child migrant laborer in the California’s agricultural fields and his later work with civil rights labor leader Caesar Chavez (California Council for the Humanities 2003b). Similarly, speaking under the title of his novel, ‘Harvest Son: Planting Roots in the American Soil,’ David Masumoto led a discussion of the Japanese-American experience as minority farmers in California at the Sacramento Central Public Library (California Council for the Humanities 2003c). The Tulare County Free Library in Visalia also organized events to draw attention to issues of social and economic inequality described in the Grapes of Wrath by organizing a book drive for homeless and poor children in its area (California Council for the Humanities 2003d).
According to ‘California Story’ the diversity of experience among California domestic settlers and foreign immigrants could be universalized in terms of the ‘Okie Story’ as written in The Grapes of Wrath. By drawing upon a specific version of the Okie past, the California Council for the Humanities’ ‘California Story’ masked not only the diversity of the Okie experience but also that of all domestic migrants and foreign immigrants to California by promoting a generalized tale of adversity ultimately overcome by “success, stability, and progress.”. By appropriating Okie heritage, contemporary California institutions forged a nationalist identity bounded in space along the state lines because “… in nationalist ideology internal diversity is always encompassed by national homogeneity” (Handler 1994, p. 29). To be a Californian was to understand and sympathize with a once marginalized group achieving social and economic status. However, what this tale ignored was the power struggle that took place for Okies to now be considered the hallmark of what it means to be a Californian.
“Power,” Stuart Hall explains “not only constrains and prevents: it is also productive. It produces new discourses, new kinds of knowledge …, new objects of knowledge… it shapes new practices… and institutions” (Hall 1997, p. 261). The productivity to which Hall refers also generates new geographies that reconstruct identities tied to place. For the Okie story to now represent an “archetypal California story,” Okie migrants and their descendents had to assume positions of economic and social power in society and reaffirm a collective sense of success despite tribulation (Gillis 1994). An Okie discourse of contemporary success had to evolve, but at the same time it had to include shared reflections upon and appreciation of a difficult past both in and outside of California (Lowenthal 1994).
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