Soul of a People
eBook - ePub

Soul of a People

The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America

  1. 272 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Soul of a People

The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America

About this book

Soul of a People is about a handful of people who were on the Federal Writer's Project in the 1930s and a glimpse of America at a turning point. This particular handful of characters went from poverty to great things later, and included John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Studs Terkel. In the 1930s they were all caught up in an effort to describe America in a series of WPA guides. Through striking images and firsthand accounts, the book reveals their experiences and the most vivid excerpts from selected guides and interviews: Harlem schoolchildren, truckers, Chicago fishmongers, Cuban cigar makers, a Florida midwife, Nebraskan meatpackers, and blind musicians.Drawing on new discoveries from personal collections, archives, and recent biographies, a new picture has emerged in the last decade of how the participants' individual dramas intersected with the larger picture of their subjects. This book illuminates what it felt like to live that experience, how going from joblessness to reporting on their own communities affected artists with varied visions, as well as what feelings such a passage involved: shame humiliation, anger, excitement, nostalgia, and adventure. Also revealed is how the WPA writers anticipated, and perhaps paved the way for, the political movements of the following decades, including the Civil Rights movement, the Women's Right movement, and the Native American rights movement.

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Yes, you can access Soul of a People by David A. Taylor in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Year
2010
Print ISBN
9780470403808
eBook ISBN
9780470885888
Edition
1
Topic
History
Index
History

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Foreword
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. PROLOGUE
  6. Introduction
  7. Chapter 1 - THE WRITERS’ PROJECT
  8. Chapter 2 - POINT OF DEPARTURE: NEW YORK
  9. Chapter 3 - CHICAGO AND THE MIDWEST
  10. Chapter 4 - GATHERING FOLKLORE, FROM OKLAHOMA TO HARLEM
  11. Chapter 5 - RISING UP IN THE WEST: IDAHO
  12. Chapter 6 - NAILING A FREIGHT ON THE FLY: NEBRASKA
  13. Chapter 7 - POETIC LAND, PUGNACIOUS PEOPLE: CALIFORNIA
  14. Chapter 8 - RAISING THE DEAD IN NEW ORLEANS
  15. Chapter 9 - CIGARS AND TURPENTINE IN FLORIDA
  16. Chapter 10 - AMERICAN AND UN-AMERICAN: BACK AROUND THE BOROUGHS
  17. Chapter 11 - CONVERGING ON WASHINGTON
  18. Chapter 12 - TRAVELING BEYOND
  19. APPENDIX - RESOURCES FOR READERS AND TRAVELERS
  20. SOURCES
  21. CREDITS
  22. INDEX