SPECIAL EDITION
Bay Area Readers on Their Most Treasured Books
Ralph Lewin is the executive director of the Mechanics’ Institute.
It was the dawn of the 21st century and I was driving the back roads of Yuba City with my wife, Caitlin, and newborn, Sam, in the back seat. Caitlin and I were wondering if we had to choose a book for all Californians to read, what would it be? Maybe it was the Central Valley orchards, the debate about the legality and morality of Prop. 187 or the drive with our newborn in the back seat, but whatever the reason the choice was clear: John Steinbeck’s classic, “The Grapes of Wrath.”
This story of three generations of the Joad family fleeing their home because of environmental and human disaster could be today’s story of the Nawfals of Syria, the Cáceres of Honduras, or Kinalegus of the Congo. And the act of Rose of Sharon nursing a starving man with the milk meant for her dead baby was an image of human generosity that reminded me of Steinbeck’s writing of the “one big soul ever’body’s a part of.”
I went on to work with California Humanities to ask Californians to read “The Grapes of Wrath” and had more than 1,000 programs across the state. In the process I learned that this story had not been published in Spanish in the United States. I was able to work with others to publish the translation, “Las uvas de la ira” for the first time in the U.S., and this book has become my treasure.