Abstract

Seventy years ago this October, before he was famous as a novelist, John Steinbeck published a seven-part series in the San Francisco News on the Dust Bowl families pouring into California to start new lives. Today, the 1936 series is read primarily by scholars tracing its influence on Steinbeck's masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. But with a fresh hurricane season upon us and the New Orleans victims of Hurricane Katrina constituting a diaspora comparable to the estimated 250,000 "Okies" who fled drought-ridden Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Colorado during the Great Depression, Steinbeck's reportage has new relevance.

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