A new report entitled “’The Grapes of Wrath,’ coronavirus edition” cites John Steinbeck’s classic to predict possible effects of the COVID-19 crisis on life in America if the current pandemic results in a second Great Depression. Writing in the March 28 edition of City & State New York, Zach Williams says that “An economic downturn, state border checkpoints and increasing desperation among people across the country suggest that as time goes by the story of coronavirus will only become more like a John Steinbeck novel whose ending no one can yet know.” Comparing New Yorkers today to the migrants in Steinbeck’s masterpiece, the online magazine article—illustrated with this photograph by Dorothea Lange—reminds contemporary readers that California subjected the “bum brigade” streaming into the state from Oklahoma and elsewhere to a Great Depression version of border-crossing stop-and-frisk. “After the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in federal court,” writes one source quoted in the piece, “the ‘bum blockade’ ended. But the ‘anti-Okie’ sentiment continued.” Today, says Williams, “it is New Yorkers who are facing the wrath of their fellow Americans.”
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