Wasteland
Jo Sinclair
1946
He carried his camera and case into the dining room, and as he stood there for a moment, peering at the table through the twilight haze in the room, he breathed deeply of the familiar holiday odors. Then he snapped on the light, and the table seemed to spring up out of darkness. [ . . . ]
He took several shots, quietly happy at the wonderful detail…
Creator Bio
Jo Sinclair
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.
Related Guide
Jewish Writing in the Postwar United States
Jewish American writers gained mainstream success writing about immigrant experience, assimilation, and the trauma of the Holocaust.
Related Guide
Jewish Culture in the Postwar United States
American Jews entered a "golden age" of cultural expression and self-confidence after World War II, with declining antisemitism and increasing political and cultural representation.