Reviewed by:

• Unknown No More: Recovering Sanora Babb eds. by Joanne Dearcopp and Christine Hill Smith
• Caroline Straty Kraft

With this collection of thirteen essays, Joanne Dearcopp and Christine Hill Smith bring the life and work of Sanora Babb to the forefront of twentieth-century American writing of the Great Plains and US West. The essays work toward the recovery of a writer who was, at one time, more established, particularly for her poetry and short stories. Today, thanks in part to Ken Burn's Dust Bowl documentary series, she is primarily known for her previously overlooked Dust Bowl novel, Whose Names Are Unknown, written in 1939 but unpublished until 2004. Dearcopp and Smith have compiled a series of essays that address Babb's wide-ranging literary works in the context of her life with a particular emphasis on how Babb focused on topics such as feminism, racism, and environmentalism that make her especially relevant for twenty-first century audiences.

David M. Wrobel's foreword makes the case for returning to Babb's work for its importance in the American literary canon and for the way in which her activism, explored in several of the essays, shines a light on social justice throughout the twentieth century. Many of the essays that follow highlight Babb's luminous writing, particularly her emphasis on characters who struggle to endure during times of crisis and how they engage with their surrounding landscape.

Born in 1907 in Otoe territory before Oklahoma became a state, Babb grew up in the Plains region and witnessed firsthand the poverty [End Page 390] and hardscrabble farming that drove so many families further and further west. She developed a great love for the natural world and her writing often reflected the interconnected relationship between the environment and humans. Erin Royston Battat emphasizes this connection in her essay when she argues that what stands out in Babb's writing is "the connection between her environmental consciousness, rooted in her western upbringing and her feminist thought" (40). Although Battat's essay specifically situates Babb within the context of scholars working on the recovery of western women's narratives and the frontier myth, many of the essays point to the ways in which Babb simultaneously updates and dismantles themes often found in Great Plains literature, such as manifest destiny, women as the exclusive caregivers in a household, and the happy agrarian.

There are two figures that quietly haunt the edges of this collection: John Steinbeck and scholar Douglas Wixson. After the success of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939), Random House rescinded their offer for Babb's Dust Bowl novel, believing the market could only sustain one such work. Christopher Bowman explores this episode in his essay while arguing that Babb's novel surpasses Steinbeck's book in the way it engages with climate change and presages ecocriticism. Eight of the essays refer to Douglas Wixson, a scholar of Babb and her earliest biographer, who edited Babb's field notes for On the Dirty Plate Trail: Remembering the Dust Bowl Refugee Camps (2007). Although Wixson passed away before he was able to complete his biography of Babb, his groundbreaking work on Babb and his steadfast commitment to promoting her writing is reflected throughout the collection and noted by Dearcopp and Smith in their introduction.

At the heart of much of Babb's writing is her insistence on the connection between identity and place through her depiction of farmers who realize they are dependent on nature and have a hand in shaping it through agricultural practices and land management. This collection of essays reveals how Babb's ecocritical approach, combined with her sense of progressive feminism, places her ahead of her time and renders her writing relevant for twenty-first century audiences. The essays also help generate a dialogue about how to read Babb alongside other authors. Daryl W. Palmer contextualizes [End Page 391] Babb's memoir, An Owl on Every Post (1970), with Willa Cather's My Ántonía (1918) and F. Scott Fitzgerald...

审阅者：

• 不再未知：恢复萨诺拉·巴布编辑。作者：乔安妮·迪尔科普和克里斯汀·希尔·史密斯
• 卡罗琳·斯特拉蒂·克拉夫特

乔安妮·迪尔科普 (Joanne Dearcopp) 和克里斯汀·希尔·史密斯 (Christine Hill Smith) 通过这本由十三篇论文组成的作品集，将萨诺拉·巴布 (Sanora Babb) 的生活和作品带到了 20 世纪美国大平原和美国西部写作的前沿。这些文章致力于恢复一位曾经更加成熟的作家，尤其是她的诗歌和短篇小说。今天，部分得益于肯·伯恩 (Ken Burn) 的《沙尘暴》系列纪录片，她主要因之前被忽视的《沙尘暴》小说《名字无人知晓》而闻名，该小说写于 1939 年，但直到 2004 年才出版。迪尔科普和史密斯编写了一系列针对巴布的文章巴布的生活背景广泛的文学作品，特别强调巴布如何关注女权主义、种族主义和环保主义等主题，这些主题使她与二十一世纪的观众特别相关。

大卫·M·沃贝尔（David M. Wrobel）的前言为我们重新审视巴布的作品提供了理由，因为它在美国文学经典中的重要性，以及她在几篇文章中探讨的激进主义如何照亮了整个二十世纪的社会正义。接下来的许多文章都强调了巴布的才华横溢的写作，特别是她强调了在危机时期挣扎着忍受的人物以及他们如何与周围的环境相处。

巴布于 1907 年出生于俄克拉荷马州成为一个州之前的奥托地区，他在平原地区长大，亲眼目睹了贫困[第 390 页]和艰苦的农业，这些农业迫使许多家庭越来越向西发展。她对自然世界产生了极大的热爱，她的作品经常反映环境与人类之间相互关联的关系。艾琳·罗伊斯顿·巴塔特（Erin Royston Battat）在她的文章中强调了这种联系，她认为巴布的写作中最突出的是“她植根于西方成长环境的环境意识与她的女权主义思想之间的联系”（40）。尽管巴塔特的文章特别将巴布置于致力于恢复西方女性叙事和边疆神话的学者的背景下，但许多文章都指出了巴布同时更新和拆除大平原文学中常见主题的方式，例如明显的命运，妇女是家庭中唯一的照顾者，是幸福的农业者。

有两个人物静静地徘徊在这本收藏的边缘：约翰·斯坦贝克和学者道格拉斯·威克森。在斯坦贝克的《愤怒的葡萄》 （1939）获得成功后，兰登书屋取消了对巴布的《沙尘暴》小说的报价，因为他们认为市场只能维持一部这样的作品。克里斯托弗·鲍曼在他的文章中探讨了这一事件，同时认为巴布的小说在涉及气候变化和预示生态批评方面超越了斯坦贝克的书。其中八篇文章提到了道格拉斯·威克森 (Douglas Wixson)，他是巴布的学者，也是她最早的传记作者，他为巴布编辑了《脏盘子小道：记住沙尘暴难民营》(On the Dirty Plate Trail: Remembering the Dust Bowl Refugee Camps ) (2007) 的田野笔记。尽管威克森在完成巴布传记之前就去世了，但他对巴布的开创性工作以及他对推广她的写作的坚定承诺在整个集子中得到了体现，迪尔科普和史密斯在他们的介绍中也提到了这一点。

巴布大部分作品的核心是她通过对农民的描述，坚持身份与地点之间的联系，他们意识到自己依赖自然，并通过农业实践和土地管理参与塑造自然。这本散文集揭示了巴布的生态批评方法，与她进步的女权主义意识相结合，如何使她走在时代的前面，并使她的作品与二十一世纪的读者相关。这些文章还有助于产生关于如何与其他作者一起阅读巴布的对话。达里尔·W·帕尔默 (Daryl W. Palmer) 将[完第 391 页]巴布 (Babb) 的回忆录《每个帖子上的一只猫头鹰》(An Owl on Every Post ) (1970)、威拉·凯瑟 (Willa Cather) 的《我的安东尼亚》(My Ántonía ) (1918) 和 F. 斯科特·菲茨杰拉德 (F. Scott Fitzgerald) 结合起来……