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The Land of Orange Groves and Jails: Edited by Lauren Coodley 232 pages (6 x 9), with 24 b&w images A California Legacy book Novelist and muckraker Upton Sinclair will forever be associated with The Jungle, an exposé of Chicago’s meatpacking industry that "aimed for their hearts and reached their stomachs." However, Sinclair deserves equal accolades for his entertaining critiques of Southern California’s oil industry, movie studios, and urban sprawl—most of which still apply today. The Land of Orange Groves and Jails spans fifty years of Sinclair’s funny and fiery writings. Taken together, these plays, novels, articles, and pamphlets show how Sinclair’s personal life inspired his political activism. When neighbors in Long Beach struck oil, he wrote about the oil industry. His father’s addiction inspired an analysis of alcohol distributors. In 1934, he responded to the Great Depression by running for governor under the EPIC slogan: "End Poverty in California." The hard-fought campaign that followed has parallels to our current political world of vicious attack ads and allegations of voter fraud. Here also was a political figure who understood popular culture better than any of his contemporaries, using movies and the power of Hollywood to give voice to his ideas. This quintessential rabble-rouser has found an advocate in Lauren Coodley, a professor of history at Napa Valley College. Beginning with her dissertation, Coodley has spent nearly ten years studying Sinclair’s life and writings. She organized a panel of national Sinclair scholars at UCLA and wrote the script for a film biography. More importantly, she has rethought how we view Upton Sinclair, both as a Californian and as a writer who turned his own life experiences into political pop culture. |
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"Entertaining and instructive, like the demonstrated facts of Sinclair’s equally implausible but real life, so effectively rendered in Coodley’s imaginative anthology."—Los Angeles Times "The Land of Orange Groves and Jails…presents Sinclair not just as a famed twentieth century muckraker but also as a brilliantly engaged citizen of California whose political and cultural legacy transformed the state and is still relevant today."—San Francisco Chronicle "Lauren Coodley has performed a timely and valuable public service by restoring Upton Sinclair to his rightful place in California history."—Bruce Brugmann, Editor, San Francisco Bay Guardian "A must-read for students of literature, history, and political science."—Metroactive Books “As a pioneer critic of those who use mass media to distract and debase the electorate, Upton Sinclair remains at least as timely as when he wrote, and arguably more so. Like a skillful host, Professor Coodley introduces us to a fascinating individual, a force of nature whose activism moved history. It's good to see him back—and in fighting form.” “Lauren Coodley gives us a great gift with this masterfully edited collection of Upton Sinclair's writings. Land of Orange Groves and Jails should be required reading for every course on California history.” “Thanks to this brilliant anthology, we can now realize that Upton Sinclair deserves to be considered in the company of Carey McWilliams as an astute and pivotal observer of Southern California in the first half of the twentieth century.” |
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Lauren Coodley was born in Los Angeles, where her grandparents settled shortly after Upton Sinclair's arrival. She now lives in Napa with her two children, Nils and Caitlin. She teaches at Napa Community College, specializing in California labor and women's history as well as children's literature. She is the elected president of the faculty and a recipient of the McPherson Distinguished Teaching Award for 2003. She is the author of Napa: The Transformation of an American Town (Arcadia Publishing, 2004). |
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© Heyday Books, 2005 |
