The Partially True Story of the Burning of The Grapes of Wrath
“A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned, the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.”
— John Steinbeck
So opens Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, a fascinating historical chronicle by Rick Wartzman of efforts to censor Steinbeck’s now classic novel following its publication in April of 1939. I found Wartzman’s book last year when I was researching books about the history of censorship and book banning. It had been a few years since I’d done a display for Banned Books Week at my library, and I wanted to include some resources that would help provide additional perspective alongside our copies of the most challenged books.
I admit that I hadn’t thought much about The Grapes of Wrath since I read it for an AP English class one summer in high school, but I recalled that I liked it more than the other novels we had been assigned. Many of the banned and challenged classic books have become notorious for the various reasons that people have objected to their content, language and sexuality more often than anything else. Lolita, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Tropic of Cancer spring to mind. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the only title published over 20 years ago that continues to face challenges.
Much like 1982, when Banned Books Week was first established, 2022 was a lightning rod for censorship in public and school libraries. The American Library Association (ALA) documented “1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since it began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago.” Preliminary data for 2023 shows “a 20% increase from the same reporting period in 2022” as right-wing groups like Moms For Liberty and overly concerned parents continue their efforts to restrict access to books on a broader scale than ever before.
It is important to note that The Grapes of Wrath has not been the target of any recent challenges, nor has it ever made any of the Top 10 Most Challenged Book Lists, maintained by the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF). The top 13 most challenged books of 2022 in the United States overwhelmingly faced challenges for LGBTQIA and sexual content. Many others are written by authors of color and highlight important issues of racial injustice. The focus has shifted predominantly away from well-known titles written by dead white men, but strong threads remain that connect the past to the present.
The Controversy in Kern County
I also didn’t remember anything especially profane or obscene in Steinbeck’s novel which tells the story of the Joad family following the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in the mid 1930s. There are many sad and uncomfortable moments throughout The Grapes of Wrath–primarily the ending, which likely stuck closest in the minds of those who objected to the work as obscene in 1939. Certainly there were no issues with any of us reading it in school. The classics are the classics for a reason, right? I was familiar then as now with the historical significance of The Grapes of Wrath, but it was quite surprising to learn just how controversial it was from Wartzman’s account.
“If that book is banned today, what will be banned tomorrow? And what group will want a book banned the day after that?”
— Gretchen Knief
He begins by highlighting Gretchen Knief, the chief librarian of Kern County, California, in 1939. The Grapes of Wrath faced the most criticism in California since it is the setting of the novel and the primary focus of Steinbeck’s commentary on the effects of the Great Depression. Like the Joad family of the book, thousands of people migrated west from Oklahoma and other states to California in search of jobs and a better life. Kern County became a nexus for this migration with its population increasing “by more than 60 percent” in the years leading up to the publication of The Grapes of Wrath. Wartzman goes on to describe the clashes between local residents, farmers, and the migrant community in detail. The Associated Farmers of California, an anti-labor organization, was particularly incensed at Steinbeck’s portrayal of California farmers’ negative attitudes towards and treatment of migrant workers. This group and others put pressure on the Kern County Board of Supervisors, and a resolution to ban the novel from libraries and schools was introduced on August 21, 1939.
Knief oversaw a staggering seventy-one library branches across Kern County, including those located at the migratory farm-worker camps in nearby towns. She wrote an impassioned defense against banning The Grapes of Wrath from the county’s libraries.
“Banning books is so utterly hopeless and futile. Ideas don’t die because a book is forbidden reading. If Steinbeck has written the truth, that truth will survive.”
— Gretchen Knief
Indeed, The Grapes of Wrath was burned in Kern County by a small group of farm workers. The photo above shows “Clell Pruett burn[ing] The Grapes of Wrath as his boss, Bill Camp, and L. E. Plymate watch the novel go up in flames.” It was Camp, head of the Associated Farmers chapter of Kern County, who had described the book as “obscene in the extreme sense of the word.” Tensions in the community roiled on, and The Grapes of Wrath would not be restored to the shelves of Kern County libraries until 1941. In the meantime, Knief offered the banned copies of the book to other county libraries in California.
While book burnings are always shocking, I have to admit that the scene of a man dropping a book into a small trash can the size of the one at my desk wasn’t quite as dramatic as what I’d imagined in this case. Instead, what captured my attention even more was the first statement listed under The Grapes of Wrath on the Banned & Challenged Classics list:
A public library burning a book–now there was something shocking! Delving back into Wartzman’s book I figured there had to be much more to that story; however, the incident is only mentioned once. Amid a brief rundown of reactions to The Grapes of Wrath across the country, Wartzman states that “in East St. Louis, Illinois, the library board would soon vote to burn the three copies of the book it had in its collection.” Nothing more. Though if the library board voted, I wondered, what was the result? And if the East St. Louis Public Library did burn its copies of The Grapes of Wrath surely there must have been considerable news coverage at the time — and there was, albeit with a slightly different ending.
“I’ll burn them if I ever get them back.”
If communities in other parts of the country didn’t directly face the same issues as Kern County, many were just as offended by Steinbeck’s language and subject matter. On November 12, 1939 the board of trustees of the East St. Louis Public Library voted to ban The Grapes of Wrath “on grounds of obscenity” and “objectionable” language. One board member, a Mrs. H. W. Matlack, even decried that “it’s not fit for anyone’s daughter to read.” (Belleville Daily News-Democrat, Nov. 15, 1939). But there were a few problems with the board’s resolution, the first being that all three copies of the book were already checked out. Further, it appears that the issue of burning The Grapes of Wrath in East St. Louis actually comes from a comment made by J. Lyon Woodruff, the Chief Librarian, who said “I’ll burn them if I ever get them back.” — quite the opposite from Knief.
It was after this that other news outlets continued to report that the board had voted to burn The Grapes of Wrath. Of course, it’s impossible to burn books that are already checked out, and it seems an even sillier exercise to ask for them to be returned only to then ban them from the shelves. Evidently, Woodruff saw the futility as well, and remarked that “well, maybe” patrons could just keep the books following the ban.
One other problem with the board’s vote was that, in the first place, not all of the members had been in attendance. Thus, Woodruff had to call a special meeting of the board the following week. There was also considerable community opposition towards the ban by those who recognized that although “it is profane in spots…its story has so much merit that it is an excellent book.” (Belleville Daily Advocate, Nov. 18, 1939) A brief op-ed in the Decatur Herald also called the decision “completely silly” and stated that “adults should be permitted to read or not read anything that appeals to them.”
On November 21, 1939, with all members present, the board then voted to reverse its previous decision to ban the book, although it held that it would continue to “be circulated only among adults.” Something tells me that the young people of the time probably weren’t exactly clamoring to read Steinbeck’s novel, but the controversy did help it to become the best-selling book of 1939. Finally, by December, the same board purchased seven more copies to meet the continued demand of over 100 requests for the book at the library. The burning of The Grapes of Wrath by a public library, it turns out, fizzled much like a match striking a wet surface.
The Current Censorship Climate
Just as the non-event was misreported in 1939 so it’s been carried forward all the way to the present, repeated even by the editor of the American Library Association’s Banned Books resource guide. I was compelled to write this not to wag my finger or even to set the record straight necessarily. In fact, I did contact the OIF last year to let them know what I found through my newspaper research, but the information on the website remains the same so far. I fully understand that this is not exactly at the top of the OIF’s to-do list, nor should it be. It’s a minor detail in the annals of censorship history, perhaps even a boring one by this point. Still, I haven’t been able to forget it.
Certainly Wartzman’s book provides the full picture of the censorship efforts surrounding The Grapes of Wrath and its triumph as a Great American Novel. Perhaps this seemingly tiny facet in the history of book banning efforts in the United States touched a nerve with me because it’s not just books but libraries, schools, and librarians themselves who have increasingly become the focus of outside groups who ultimately want to restrict access to information in the broader community. This is also why it’s important to keep reading and supporting the most recent books by current authors that are challenged. Last year I read Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer–the number one most challenged book in both 2021 and 2022–so that I could understand the whole story for myself rather than simply judging it from the same single page that the book’s opponents continue to post on social media. Gender Queer immediately became one of my favorite books. Like Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home before it, it is a standout in the graphic novel memoir genre, and I highly recommend it.
Yet, it also remains that the classics continue to inform the clear and present dangers of censorship today. We are still drawn to them just as much for their controversies as for their command of our shared human existence. It’s distressing that those who challenge Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez, for instance, refuse to see how her book’s exploration of racism, classism, and segregation in 1930s Texas informs our current challenges just as The Grapes of Wrath did then. If only they would recognize that history is not on their side and instead work to engage critically with books and ideas rather than furthering their contemptible agenda of censorship.