American Guides: The Federal Writers' Project and the Casting of American Culture

About this book

In the midst of the Great Depression Americans were nearly universally literateand they were hungry for the written word. Magazines novels and newspapers littered the floors of parlors and tenements alike. With an eye to this market and as a response to devastating unemployment Roosevelts Works Progress Administration created the Federal Writers Project. The Projects mission was simple: jobs. But as Wendy Griswold shows in the lively and persuasive American Guides the Project had a profoundand unintendedcultural impact that went far beyond the writers paychecks. Griswolds subject here is the Projects American Guides an impressively produced series that set out not only to direct travelers on which routes to take and what to see throughout the country but also to celebrate the distinctive characteristics of each individual state. Griswold finds that the series unintentionally diversified American literary cultures cast of characterspromoting women minority and rural writerswhile it also institutionalized the innovative idea that American culture comes in state-shaped boxes. Griswolds story alters our customary ideas about cultural change as a gradual process revealing how diversity is often the result of politically strategic decisions and bureaucratic logic as well as of the conflicts between snobbish metropolitan intellectuals and stubborn locals. American Guides reveals the significance of cultural federalism and the indelible impact that the Federal Writers Project continues to have on the American literary landscape.