DORIS, CA
Monday, July 3, 2002

The Grapes of Wrath exhibit at COS library

COS/Weed

The public is invited to view an exhibit devoted to the Dust Bowl migration to California as told through John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The exhibit, which includes pictures, quotes, books and 1930s campsite artifacts, was created by library staff member Lynda Zehsazian, assisted by Elisa Sawyer. The College of the Siskiyous Weed Campus Library is open for summer session, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. To 1 p.m., until July 25.

The COS Library is participating in a statewide summer reading program which is focused on Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The California State Library, the Center for the book and the California Council for the Humanities invite citizens to look at migration as a common experienced shared by all Californians in preparation for statewide events in October that will explore the parallels between the book and the contemporary California experience. Anyone interested in finding more information on the subject may go to the following website: www.calhum.org.

Between 1935 and 1940 over one million people left their homes in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri to escape the wind, dust, and drought and set out for California. In 1936 novelist and newspaper reporter John Steinbeck became interested in the plight of the "Okies." he stayed near the "Weedpatch Camp" in the neighboring community of Weedpatch, California, and began gathering material for his controversial novel. Within weeks of the book's publication in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath hit the bestseller list. Although this book was once called an "obscene work of fiction." banned and taken off library shelves, today many teachers at schools and universities call the book the greatest novel ever written. It won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize.

For more information on this exhibit call the COS Library at 938-5331. The Weed Campus can be reached toll-free from 1-888-397-4339.