Wasteland

Born Ruth Seid in Brooklyn, writer Jo Sinclair grew up in a working-class home, the daughter of parents who had immigrated from Russia. The family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, when Sinclair was an infant. After graduating from a technical high school as class valedictorian, Sinclair worked in a factory before she was hired through the Works Progress Administration’s program for writers. Taking up her pseudonym, she published her first story, titled “Noon Lynching,” in 1936 in New Masses, a Marxist magazine affiliated with the Communist Party. Her novel Wasteland won the Harper Prize in 1946, bolstering her career as a writer. Across her oeuvre, her writing reflects themes of the disenfranchised, exploring Jim Crow segregation, immigration, antisemitism, gender, and sexuality.