Narrative Predicaments: New Dimensions of the Federal Writers' Project

The New Deal has long been one of the most fertile areas for studying American culture due to the unprecedented weight government placed on artistic programs. Under the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Arts Projects targeted the employment of artists, playwrights, actors, writers, and so many others in creative industries, indicating that the Roosevelt Administration ushered in a new set of federal priorities. For many New Deal liberals, these projects were not merely about providing relief, but envisioning a culture for the masses, one necessary for a more democratic, textured national identity.

At a time when the Federal Arts Project's successors, the National Endowment of the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts are threatened, it is important to look back at the significant value of federally funded art initiatives. Two recent studies, Wendy Griswold's American Guides and Katherine A. Stewart's Long Past Slavery explore the production and meaning of central initiatives within the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), demonstrating various ways that the government sought to preserve and expand the written record of the American experience. Within the FWP, both the ex-slave narrative project and the American Guide Series (AGS) fed and were fueled by a documentary impulse that permeated so much of mass culture in the 1930s, seeking out voices that had not previously been captured as part of the historical narrative. Both projects had unintended consequences. As with all programs under the Works Progress Administration, the push and pull between federal and state workers often proved irreconcilable, and as New Deal liberalism was consistently tested, the more unconventional goals of some administrators became compromised by programmatic and financial needs.

Sociologist Wendy Griswold interrogates the AGS as part of a three-part book study on regionalism in America and Europe. As the second volume in the set, Griswold's work lays out all the structural elements of the AGS, a series of guidebooks created under the auspices of the FWP intended to boost tourism while employing writers in all states. American Guides includes vast appendices and provides detailed information on the demographic breakdown of authors who worked for the program. Chapters move through the mechanics of the program, the contents of the guides for travel, the relationship between state and federal offices, and the new notion of the AGS as literature outside of a traditional definition. Griswold's work is a thorough description of important dynamics with the AGS. She pays concerted attention to the inclusivity of authors with varying previous experiences as well as the ways that the books themselves operated as a new form of material culture—more often read at home than used for travel. This use of the guides as literature rather than for applied purposes is particularly insightful. Sociologists unfamiliar with the Federal Writer's Program will undoubtedly find the book fascinating, and the three-book series is likely to contribute much to that field. For historians familiar with the New Deal Arts Projects, however, the book covers similar terrain as other studies that have explored the American Guide Series and the FWP as a whole.

One of the challenges of crossing disciplines is the question of methodological relevance, and in this case, Griswold may be locating information that sociologists will greatly appreciate. Historians have, however, worked for decades within the "hidden" WPA records Griswold draws on, and the story of the New Deal's multi-ethnic, gender inclusivity is an established part of the narrative, from the appointment of Labor Secretary Frances Perkins to the influential "Black Cabinet" advisor, Mary MacLeod Bethune. In essence, Griswold's book veers from the most nuanced accounts of the arts projects. American Guides begins by stating that the government set up...