One powerful local player who pushed for the ban was Bill Camp, head of the local Associated Farmers, a group of big landowners who were avid opponents of organized labor. Rick Wartzman, author of the new book Obscene In The Extreme, says what happened in Kern County illustrates the deep divide between left and right in California in the 1930s. One member of the county board of supervisors denounced the book as a 'libel and lie.' In August 1939, by a vote of 4 to 1, the board approved a resolution banning The Grapes Of Wrath from county libraries and schools. When the book came out, some of the powers that be in the county thought that they had been portrayed unfairly they felt that Steinbeck hadn't given them credit for the effort they were making to help the migrants. Penniless and homeless, many landed in Kern County. Though fictional, Steinbeck's novel was firmly rooted in real events: Three years before the book was published a drought in the Dust Bowl states forced hundreds of thousands of migrants to California. the endpoint of the Joad family's migration. The book was an immediate best-seller around the country, but it was also banned and burned in a number of places, including Kern County, Calif.

John Steinbeck's 1939 classic, The Grapes Of Wrath, which chronicles an Oklahoma family's hapless migration westward, is a perfect example. 'The materials that are challenged and banned say something about the human condition.' 'They're not afraid of the book they're afraid of the ideas,' says Krug. Politics, religion, sex, witchcraft - people give a lot of reasons for wanting to ban books, says Judith Krug of the ALA, but most often the bannings are about fear. 29 marks the beginning of the American Library Association's annual 'Banned Books Week,' a commemoration of all the books that have ever been removed from library shelves and classrooms.

The grapes of wrath goodreads