The Grapes of Wrath is a novel about a journey. We will read about the Joad family and what happens to them after they are forced to leave their home in Oklahoma. For our new students coming to Cornell in August, our theme of departure is an immediate one. You will soon be leaving your family, friends, and community to come live and learn with us in our small city in upstate New York. What will your journeys be like? What state lines and international borders will you cross in your odysseys to Ithaca?
Reading a long book is also a journey, an expedition of words launched by an author into our imaginations. Page by page. It is a journey that often changes us. We are different after reading a good book. In this journey we will be given glimpses of America in the 1930s. This is John Steinbeck's fictional America, but it is a portrait of a real America that speaks of that time during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
During the summer my guest authors and I will be reading our way through the book with you. This is a "community" reading. We are reading this together. We would very much like to hear from you as you read the book. Send us your comments and questions. Blog with us. Follow our way through the book on Twitter. Read and react.
Let us leave home together as you find your way in the world.
[State Line. Texas--Oklahoma. Photograph by Arthur Rothstein, March 1940. Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction Number: LC-USF34-024265-D.]
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