John Steinbeck’s classic was an instant bestseller when it was published in 1939. Chronicling an Oklahoma family’s migration to California, this novel was not celebrated by all and subsequently banned as well as burned. Once place where this occurred was in Kern County, California, the endpoint of many journeys west and the setting of the novel. Powerful landowners and employers in California did not like the way they were depicted in the novel. Though The Grapes of Wrath is fiction, it is based on true events. The officials banned the book from public libraries and schools.
Despite these efforts, Steinbeck won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for this novel. It was also referenced heavily when he won the Nobel Prize in 1962. The Grapes of Wrath has become one of the most important American classic novels and is frequently taught in high school curriculums across the country.
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