About the American Guide Series
Probably the most widely known achievements of the Federal
Writers' Project were the travel guides created for every state--the famous
"American Guides" series. John Steinbeck used the WPA state guides as
he crossed the continent in the early 1960s and he later wrote Travels
with Charley about his journey.
The WPA guide to Kansas was titled Kansas,
a guide to the Sunflower State
when published in 1939. In 1984, it was republished by The University
Press of Kansas as The WPA Guide to 1930s Kansas. After seven
decades, its pages still provide a wealth of reliable historic, geographic,
and cultural information on Kansas, as well as some intriguing lore that
many modern-day readers will find "new." It gives an accurate picture
of Kansas between the Great Depression and World War II--of its industrial,
agricultural, and natural resources.
The book is divided into three sections: seventeen topical essays covering
subjects such as Indians, folklore, religion, and architecture; touring
information of the eighteen largest Kansas cities and towns; and twelve
automobile tours spanning Kansas and border states. Included are
eighty photographs, four maps, and an essay on the "contemporary scene" by
William Allen White.
Ablah Library has copies of the 1984 reprint at F686 .K3 1984 in the circulating collection and a copy of the 1939 original in Special Collections.
WPA writers also compiled guides for many cities
and for distinctive cultural regions in the U.S. Among the more colorful
regional titles are Gumbo Ya Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales,
An Ornery Bunch: Tales and Anecdotes Collected by the WPA Montana
Writers Project and Mister, You've Got Yourself a Horse by the
Nebraska Writers' Projects. Writers interviewed former slaves and recorded
the life histories of citizens all across America. A number of those
interviews can be found today on the following sites from the American Memory
sites of the Library of Congress:
American Life Histories: Manuscripts
from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/wpaintro/wpahome.html
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from
the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
