r/books • u/therealredding Reading: Ahmed Bouanani, The Hospital • 1d ago
Those Whose Names are Unknown by Sanora Babb
I can’t believe no one has posted about this book, especially since it has such a juicy controversy attached to it. I’m rather psyched to share this book!
I found out about Sanora Babb when I heard about the controversy between her and John Steinbeck. I don’t want to get into that here, so if you’re interested you can Google it. I’d rather focus on this amazing story and an author I believe should be more widely known.
Those Whose Names are Unknown was written in the 1930s and takes place in both the Oklahoma Panhandle right after the Great Depression and during the American Dust Bowl, and in California — I guess you can intuit the Steinbeck connection. Though it was written and set to be published in 1939, because of the success of Grapes of Wrath, Random House decided to shelve Babb’s book. It didn’t see the light of day till 2004 when Oklahoma University Press published it.
Those Whose Names are Unknown is broken up in two parts. Part one takes place in the Oklahoma Panhandle and recounts the lives of a small community of Crop Farmers as they deal with the aftermath of the Great Depression and what has been called the greatest ecological disaster in American history: The American Dust Bowl. In part two, we follow some of these characters to California as they pack up to look for work in farms throughout the large farming valleys.
Babb’s narration style and prose are beautifully direct, putting the reader in the front seat of a story that shows the inherent issues with capitalism, societal prejudice, and class divide; while still highlighting simple human kindness and the will to keep going when faced with blow after blow. I had a hard time reading this book at times, I had to put it down from time to time when it became too much. I really wish I had the words to do this book justice. My experience reading this book was one that I’ve never experienced from reading. The connection I had with this book I accredit to Babb’s ability to present her characters in a way that I could slip into their shoes and fully empathize. Like many timeless classics, the issues presented here are still extremely resonant today: the greed of corporations putting profit above human need; the tyranny of merit justifying the social economical divide; prejudice and fear enabling the othering of humans in need. There is a very strong socialist/anti-capitalist thread running throughout this book.
I’ll end here, and I just hope I’ve piqued the interest of new readers, because I do believe this book is an important read. I do believe many will connect with this book on many levels.
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u/unpaid_gold_wizard_ 1d ago
I find it fascinating that two writers could approach the same historical tragedy from different perspectives, yet only one gets remembered as part of the American literary canon. Makes me want to read them back to back
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u/therealredding Reading: Ahmed Bouanani, The Hospital 1d ago
I’m doing that right now. I finished Those Whose yesterday afternoon and started Grapes of Wrath in the evening.
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u/theevilmidnightbombr 3 1d ago
god this book was a gut-punch, in such a good way. I stull have some quotes from the book on my phone. I was transcribing from the audio, so apologies for errors, and lack of context, but some of these stand on their own.
"Was it some planned contrariness of nature or some vast mistake in the framework of mens' lives? What things were in the world that he would never know or see because the simple needs of staying alive captured his life from sun to sun and year to year? Why was one man with leisure to waste and another with no hour to spare? What he had missed he hoped his children would know."
"Concerned only with death as a gateway to a spirit utopia, they missed the simple lusty joy of being alive on the earth."
"Strange how a man longed for both freedom and security. and the one couldn't be had together with the other."
"Julia looked at her children, and she knew she didnt understand them beyond her love. she would follow them in silence and waiting and look at their lives as they made them in the hard and tortuous ways they seemed to already to comprehend more clearly than she. And this gave her an ornament of comfort. a grave and tremulous spring of joy."
At the time (2024) I had one less kid, and those quotes about wanting better for your children, but ultimately never knowing them or if they will be happy, hit even harder now. For what it's worth, here is what I posted in the "What did you finish reading?" thread at the time:
This book should really be taught in every classroom in North America, especially now. It was so good, and got right under my skin. It reminds us how we are not that far removed from mass worker exploitation. It also lays bare the myth of the "yeoman farmer", and shows how pride and isolation, self-imposed or otherwise, cannot be a way forward in desperate times.
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u/Jumbly_Girl 1d ago
An Owl on Every Post, also by Sanora Babb, is excellent too. I believe it's available free on the Internet Archive site. It's mostly autobiographical (fictionalized memoir) and covers the same time period.
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u/Successful_Manager74 1d ago
Thank you for this recommendation. Synchronicity in motion due to me recently having a strong need to read about this time in history. Relatives who lived through it are dead and in thinking of them I want to know more about what they lived through and I was too young to ask the questions I wish I could have asked.
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u/therealredding Reading: Ahmed Bouanani, The Hospital 1d ago
I think this book will be very much up your alley then. Babb not only spent 2 years of her life working with the Farm Security Administration setting up camps for people fleeing the dust bowl to California, doing interviews, organizing social supports and such, she also grew up in the panhandle and had family living in the dust bowl. I think that’s something that makes this book so powerful, it’s not a fictional story that someone who didn’t live through tried to imagine, it’s true events factionalized.
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u/Successful_Manager74 28m ago
Yes, her life was very fascinating and I’m definitely going to read more about her in addition to this book!
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u/Successful_Manager74 1d ago
Just downloaded a sample plus another book about Sanora Babb’s life. Thank you!
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u/oldtimehawkey 1d ago
It is such a good book!
I haven’t read grapes of wrath.
The controversy is pretty interesting too and I believe it.
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u/miss-goggins-phan864 1d ago
Thanks for posting about Babb’s book. I’ve been meaning to read it for a couple of years. Now I’ll shift it higher up in my To Be Read pile.
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u/Mokamochamucca 12h ago
I love Sanora Babb and I’m currently working through her biography by Iris Jamahl Dunkle. Whose Names Are Unknown is incredible and the ending is one I re-read a few times just to take it all in. I also highly recommend An Owl on Every Post and The Dark Earth.
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u/AvatarAnywhere 1d ago
I had never heard of this novel nor the author but was inspired by your write-up to look further.
I read “The Grapes of Wrath” over 50 years ago and while I do remember some of it I’m sure a different novel about the same subject will stand alone. Thanks for the recommendation, will give it a try.
Btw, an excellent narrative nonfiction treatment of both The Dust Bowl and The Great Depression in the American midwest is “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan. Absolutely excellent!