Reading The Grapes of Wrath in 2010: Capitalism and Immigration
One of the most popular and well-written American books of all time, The Grapes of Wrath gives a very human perspective on the harsh lives of migrants, personified by the Joads - a family of poor sharecroppers from Oklahoma. Evicted from their family farm, just as the millions of Mexicans who have suffered enclosure from their land and become homeless and jobless because of NAFTA, the Joads travel to California in a desperate search of work, only to encounter the harassment of authorities and the hatred of the local population.