whose names are unknown–a novel by Sanora Babb

(Title taken from a legal eviction notice: To John Doe and Mary Doe Whose True Names Are Unknown)

A person of the Boomer generation, I grew up with parents and grandparents who had lived through the Great Depression in the last century. All kids my age suffered side effects from that. “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!!” “I’ll teach you what work really means!” “Kids of today are too spoiled!” “We may be poor, but we will be clean.” 

On and on it went, comment after comment, the values of which guided how we were raised. Baths only on Sunday, with only one tub of water. Toilet paper rationed to three squares. One pair of shoes a year or longer, if they hadn’t worn out. My sister’s feet are deformed now, because her shoes didn’t wear out so she  had to keep wearing them. Mine did before year’s end, so I had to wear barn boots to school for months.

The Depression had cast a pallor over everyday life and that extended way into the 60’s, at least for lower income families, such as mine. Back then I’d read The Grapes of Wrath, I’d listened to Woody Guthrie songs, and I thought I’d covered that period thoroughly in my school and literary studies and in life. Come to find out, I hadn’t. Just recently I learned about another book written in that time period but not published until 2004. That’s when I purchased and read whose names are unknown, by Sanora Babb.

Sanora lived the life she wrote about. She had lived in a dugout in a place far from schools and woods, and where crops rarely made it. She understood the Dust Bowl. She used words from her mother’s letters in her book. In 1938 she went to work as a volunteer for the Farm Security Administration in the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys, setting up camps for the workers. At night she wrote in her diaries and used those happenings in the book, also.

She gave a copy of all her notes to another migrant camp manager who then gave them to another author, John Steinbeck, who was also visiting the camps for research. Guess whose book got published first?

Babb had sent four chapters from her manuscript to Random house. Bennett Cerf, an editor, liked her work and sent her money to come to New York for the summer and finish her novel. He approved her finished work, calling it “exceptionally fine.” However, just then Steinbeck’s book was published and sold 430,000 copies in five months. Cerf wrote Babb, that “Obviously, another book at this time about exactly the same subject would be a sad anticlimax!” (I think he was wrong about that, but I wasn’t a book editor in that time.) Quite nicely and helpful to her, he paid her in advance for another novel, so she put her manuscript in a drawer and wrote five other novels, one of which was a depiction of her family life, the characters being a nomadic gambler, his wife and his daughters in the Kansas-Oklahoma region during the Depression, The Lost Traveler.

Finally, after a slew of other books written about the Depression were published, her book was published. It is seen as different from the others because she actually lived that life, both in the Dust Bowl and in the migrant camps in California. The ugly names tossed at the disposed farmers working for pennies were also tossed at her. Her book shows the domestic, women’s view, as well as the men’s. 

Babb’s novel is separated into two parts, the first section depicting her characters trying to survive the blowing dust that killed every crop on the plains, and the second section as they travel from crop to crop trying to get ahead, only to find they sometimes couldn’t make enough money to even eat. One meal when there was absolutely nothing to eat, a woman makes pepper tea—she boils pepper in water as a soup and that is their meal. 

One of my favorite characters in the first section was the philosophizing grandfather. He had decided to be done with religion because everything was focused on the hereafter and he asked why could he not hope for joy right here on earth? Why did he have to wait? “He listened to the repetitious gloomy, preaching against human joyfulness, the stern pleading for men and women to endure their burdensome earthly lot. Happiness came after—a pure and indefinable happiness that did not sound very gratifying.” Religion seemed to teach that laughing and singing and knowing oneself was wrong, having doubts and questioning was wrong, expecting to work hard was good. “Religion was for the poor…the crust of bread, the sip of wine was not the flesh and blood of Christ but a symbol of life—the inadequate, betrayed life of people everywhere on the earth.”

Much of the lovely descriptions of things also comes from the grandfather, who seems to hold on to hope and positivity. When the others leave, he stays in the little dugout, sure that prosperity will soon come around.

In this section, awful things occur—a baby is born early and dies, a store owner commits suicide, a man dies because his car goes in the ditch in a dust storm, and two young people can’t get married because he can’t make enough money for a house or household items. Farmers lose their farm equipment and farms to the bank because they are mortgaged to the hilt and the crops fail so they cannot pay the bank. I couldn’t help noticing the problems for farmers are much the same as problems for farmers now. There are two brothers who want to farm and one of them has been to university and understands the importance of diversity and innovation, and the same is true of that today.

Also, we see in this section, as in the other, people starting to think about banding together in common cause. This was the time of farm collectives and unions, the farm bureau. Some of the dialogue reminded me of our national situation today: “And all of a sudden in the cities, from what I can figger out, the big ones that have been eating up the little ones have got profit indigestion and belched up millions of men. They don’t need ‘em anymore.”

“Them farmers back east always been having milk strikes, getting together for relief, and kind of sticking together for things. Must be something powerful wrong or farmers wouldn’t get together.”

In the second section, two families, one without a man, stick together as they follow crops. The problems occur when there is too long a break between one crop and another and money has run out. In one instance, one of the young girls goes out in the dark and steals alfalfa so that her mother and cook it for the families because otherwise, they have nothing to eat. Other problems are the constant dirt making it impossible to keep clean, lack of water, lack of money to buy gas to get to fields or the next crop, lack of birth control, company stores that charged more for food and basic needs than what the workers made, and getting beaten by bosses and thugs for trying to form unions to get better wages. At the same time, everywhere they go, epithets are thrown their way, calling them shiftless, stupid and lazy. Their kids have to attend different schools from those who are not migrants. 

“…what makes me mad is those rich bastards can/t make enough sweating the blood out of us, they got to overcharge and cheat us out of our own money. It ain’t how you save pennies that makes you rich, it’s how you steal pennies. Pay ‘em out and steal ‘em back before a man even gets to feel his own money.” 

The last few chapters are rich with dialogue from the viewpoints of the farm owners and the migrant workers both. They are in the middle of the strike and the farm owners think they’ll win because of increased mechanization coming onboard within the next year. They won’t need workers anymore. In the obverse, the migrant workers are banding together, helping one another, and in the midst of rain ruining the crop, the whole lot of them are moving out and going north to another crop, leaving the farmer to suffer because of his own stinginess. They know together they are stronger and their hope is that the world will bend to their will, at least for now.

This book is written more in the style of books in the 30’s, not like Steinbeck’s book and not like books now. For instance, the inciting incident forcing them to leave their farms doesn’t occur until page 133. Instead, there exists a lot of philosophy about the state of humanity and a lot of description concerning the land. Wealth and its acquisition are frequent topics as is how to treat others . If you aren’t in a hurry as a reader and your attention span is long enough in this time of flickering screens as we scroll, this book is enjoyable and teaches what it was like during the Great Depression. Go listen to some Woody Guthrie music and get yourself in the mood.