The Dark Earth and Selected Prose from the Great Depression SO

“This book is a fitting monument to a rare and extraordinary writer whose nuanced fiction and journalism engage the politics of everyday life. Babb explores the lived experience of the overlooked people stranded or kicked to the sidelines by the remorseless class, gender and racial oppression of the Depression era. With verve and empathy, she shapes our perceptions of what it is to be human in a well-timed collection for our own moment of protest and ethical reflection around analogous issues.” —Alan Wald, author of Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left

A collection of short stories and journalism by Sanora Babb, written between 1932 and 1949, that brings to life the painful period of the Great Depression. Offering unique insights, Babb writes with a passion and empathy gained through personal experience. Whether real or fictional, the people in these pages may struggle but they are also bursting with potential and desire.Arranged chronologically, from early autobiographical short fiction to her leftist journalism and later more innovative fiction, Babb’s work interweaves fiction and non-fiction into her characteristic storytelling, lyrical, style.

Included are selections previously published in literary and progressive journals as diverse as Kansas Magazine, The Anvil, New Masses, The Clipper, and New Theater, as well as unpublished journalism and stories. This new collection includes Babb’s preface to her four-story collection The Dark Earth with an introduction by Erin Royston Battat.