One of the few times in my time here on goodreads when I feel like writing: OMG. ... OMG, and really meaning it. Es un viaje a la miseria, la pobreza que amenaza a la familia de Lester Jeter y a la que temen porque les hará inferiores a las familias de negros que les rodean, que habían estado tradicionalmente subordinados a ellos. Heredero de una plantación de algodón que en tiempos fue próspera, ahora Lester y su mujer Ada son meros arrendatarios, aunque se agarran a la esperanza de pedir un crédito para volver a plantar una cosecha. Han tenido 17 hijos, de los cuales sólo quedan en casa Ellie May con su labio leporino y su cuerpo explosivo y Dude, que no tiene una inteligencia normal. I found Jeter Lester to be an unsympathetic character for the most part, until the very end, when Lov gave a kind of eulogy about people who love the land and what they expect from it. This passage gave me a better understanding of Jeter and I read it over and over again. Jeter had had the ambition and life beaten out of him by the breakdown of the only system he had ever known and the final betrayal was that of the land itself. The Lesters are struggling to get by on their plantation. The Great Depression has turned the American economy upside down, and it's corrupting the Lesters' lives. Unfortunately, they have turned to morally corrupt antics, highlighting the historic racism of Southerners during this time period, among other difficulties.

Caldwell was born on December 17, 1903, in the small town of White Oak, Coweta County, Georgia. He was the only child of Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church minister Ira Sylvester Caldwell and his wife Caroline Preston (née Bell) Caldwell, a schoolteacher. Rev. Caldwell's ministry required moving the family often, to places including Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina. When he was 15 years old, his family settled in Wrens, Georgia. [11] His mother Caroline was from Virginia. Her ancestry included English nobility which held large land grants in eastern Virginia. Both her English ancestors and Scots-Irish ancestors fought in the American Revolution. Ira Caldwell's ancestors were Scots-Irish and had also been in America since before the revolution and had fought in it. [12] The tobacco road that passes by the rural Georgia home of Jeeter Lester and his family, in Erskine Caldwell’s 1932 novel Tobacco Road, may speak to the prosperous colonial history of tobacco farming. But by the early-20th-century setting of this novel, the tobacco market has long since gone bust, and the cotton market seems likely to follow. And impoverished small farmers like Jeeter Lester, sharecroppers who are trying to make a living through tenant farming, are trapped in a system where they are bound to lose – even if they don’t know that they’re trapped.

Caldwell occasionally steps somewhat clumsily into the narrative to discuss his message more boldly. Otherwise he lets the story provide the details of the rich in power, tenant farmers set loose with nothing, the land being lost to poor use practices over generations. Escrita en 1932, en plena Gran Depresión, esta breve y ácida novela refleja el triste destino de los pequeños agricultores arruinados por los cambios económicos que estaban teniendo lugar. Born in rural west Georgia, Caldwell was the son of a preacher whose ministry took him all over the South. Educated by his mother, a former schoolteacher, Caldwell observed closely the depths of the rural Southern poverty that he observed in his family’s travels through the region, and as he grew into manhood he came to believe that the American economic system was unfairly set against the poor. Tobacco Road, with its unflinching portrayal of Southern rural poverty and its consequences, reflects Caldwell’s life experiences and his political beliefs.

Caldwell’s characterization of America’s lowest class may have been published in 1932, but its legacy (and their progeny) still abounds. U.S. pop culture is rife with representatives: Ernest T. Bass, Jethro Bodine, Junior Samples, Larry the Cable Guy…

In 1941, Caldwell reported from the USSR for Life magazine, CBS radio and the newspaper PM. [14] He wrote movie scripts for about five years. Caldwell wrote articles from Mexico and Czechoslovakia for the North American Newspaper Alliance. [14] Personal life [ edit ]