2026 Spring Read: The Joads are Still with Us

The Joads are Still with Us
by Glenda Shepard

The Joads are still with us.  They have survived under many different names, but they share most of the same characteristics as the Joads.   First, poverty defined the Joads and the other families who had left Oklahoma before the Joads.  Since in 1938, they all were poor, they weren't ashamed of how they looked.  In chapter five a sharecropper admits, “If all the neighbors weren't the same, we'd be too ashamed to go to meeting.”  Today, with no Great Depression hanging over our economy, roughly 38 million US citizens or a  fraction over 11 percent of the population live at or below the poverty level of $1,5060.00 income for one person according to Healthcare.gov.  

Second, the Joads were not literate enough to deal with bankers, landowners and their  contracts.   Grandpa and Grandma either couldn't or didn't read.  Tom said in chapter 4 he figured Granma didn't read the Christmas card she sent him.  “She lost her glasses the year I went up.  Maybe she never did find em. Pa Joad could sign his name and fill out a catalogue order, but as Tom says on page 102, “Pa could write, but he wouldn't.   Didn't like to.  It gave him the shivers to write.”  Probably like many sharecroppers of that time, Tom says on page 113, “Ever’ time PA seen writin’ somebody took somepin’ away from ‘im.”  Without reading and writing skills, sharecroppers like the Joads couldn't fight more powerful banks and courts.  

Today, schools struggle to recoup losses brought on by Covid.  Math and reading scores are below grade levels in many schools.  Even worse, many rural schools cannot find teachers to fill positions. 

Third, in 1938 and 2025 we don't have sufficient facilities for those people who do fall between the cracks.  Those financial traps range from a medical disability caused by a car crash, to war injuries, to drug addiction, alcoholism, or mental illness. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal made a start, but that help was too late for the Joads, and woefully inadequate for the disadvantaged of today.  Today if you're near the top of the income ladder, you are convinced those below you are only there because they didn't work hard enough.  But if you're near the bottom rung, working two or three jobs, and seeing more month left at the end of the paycheck than there is money, you’ll feel the pressure of futility just as the Joads do.

Whatever the reason, the Joads are still with us.

This is Glenda Shepard and my BookByte for the Grapes of Wrath part of the spring read for HPPR Radio Readers Book Club.