Skip to main content

Tidbits - Jan. 27, 2022 - Reader Comments: Abortion; Bronx Apartment Fire; Homelessness; Pandemic; Cryptocurrency; Alabama Amazon Union Election Do-Over; Tonga Tsunami; Lorraine Hansberry; Sidney Poitier, Paul Robeson; JFK Assassination; more...

Portside
Reader Comments: Abortion; Bronx Apartment Fire; Homelessness; Pandemic; Cryptocurrency; Alabama Amazon Union Election Do-Over; Tonga Tsunami; Emma Watson; Lorraine Hansberry; Sidney Poitier, Paul Robeson; JFK Assassination Revisited; more...

Is There a Ma Joad for the Piketty Era?

Katie Baker The Daily Beast
In the 75 years since novelist John Steinbeck published his masterpiece about the Okie migration, the towering Ma Joad has faded from archetype to anachronism. Ever since Steinbeck published his opus on the plight of the Dust Bowl migrants in 1939, readers have warmed to Ma as a paragon of folksy integrity - "an unforgettably vigorous figure, like Mother Courage without the corruption or rapacity," - and, more recently, praised her as a feminist icon...
Subscribe to Lorraine Hansberry