The Grapes of Wrath
Make a Difference in Your Community
"This novel radicalized me. It changed my life. It made me a dedicated
advocate of organizing and collective bargaining," says Ashley Judd, who came
upon the classic when she was a young actor just starting out. "It was
about 1991, and my acting teacher, the great Bob Carnegie, kept the fees
at the school very low so that we didn't have to waste our time working
as waiters. He wanted us to be able to go to museums, to see theater,
to read. And I took him seriously: I read one Steinbeck novel after
another, and the next thing I knew I had read his entire works—I even
read the journal he kept while writing Grapes."
— As told to Sara Nelson
