Sanora Babb

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Sanora Babb (April 21, 1907 to December 31, 2005) was an American novelist, poet, and literary editor.

She was the wife of Chinese American cinematographer James Wong Howe.

Personal life

Babb had a long association with writer William Saroyan, which developed into an unrequited love affair on Saroyan's part. She also had a relationship with Ralph Ellison.

Before World War II, she met her future husband, the Chinese-American cinematographer James Wong Howe. They went to Paris in 1937 to marry, but their marriage was not recognized in California due to the state's anti-miscegenation law (which barred marriage between people of different races). Howe could not cohabitate with Babb when they were unwed, according to his traditional Chinese views, so they had separate apartments in the same building. Howe's studio employment "morals clause" forbade him from openly revealing their union.

In fact, they did not marry until 1948, after plaintiffs Andrea Perez (white) and Sylvester Davis (black) filed a lawsuit (Perez vs. Sharp) in state supreme court, which reversed the prohibition. It took Howe and Babb another three days to find a judge who agreed to marry them. The judge allegedly remarked, "She looks old enough." If she wishes to marry a chink, this is her business." In 1939, Babb had used the pseudonym Sylvester Davis, the same name as the husband in Perez vs. Sharp.

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Early life and career

Sanora Babb was born in Otoe, Oklahoma, but neither her mother nor father were from the Otoe group of Native Americans. Walter, a seasoned gambler, relocated Sanora and her sister Dorothy to a one-room dugout on a broomcorn farm owned by her grandfather near Lamar, Colorado. (The town of An Owl is located in Baca County and to the south of Lamar, which is in Prowers County, is located.)

In her books An Owl on Every Post and The Lost Traveler, she was fictionalized. She did not start attending school until she was 11, and she graduated from high school as a valedictorian. She began attending the University of Kansas, but she could not afford to continue there, so she transferred to junior College in Garden City, Kansas, after one year.

The Garden City Herald was her first newspaper, and many of her papers were reprinted by the Associated Press. She came from Los Angeles in 1929 to work for the Los Angeles Times, but the newspaper retracted its offer due to the 1929 stock market meltdown. She was occasionally homeless due to the depression and sleeping in Lafayette Park. She went on to work for Warner Brothers and wrote scripts for radio station KFWB. She joined the John Reed Club and was a member of the United States Communist Party for ten years, visiting the Soviet Union in 1936.

She returned to California in 1938 to work for the Farm Security Administration. She kept detailed records on the Dust Bowl migrants' tent camps while working with FSA in California. The notes were handed over by her boss Tom Collins to John Steinbeck without her knowledge. Whose Names Are Unknown was turned into her book Whose Names Are Unknown. Bennett Cerf had intended to publish the book with Random House, but the appearance of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath caused the publication to be postponed in 1939. Her book was not released until 2004.

Babb, the League of American Writers' West Coast secretary, began in the 1940s. She edited the literary journal The Clipper and its successor The California Quarterly, as well as running a Chinese restaurant owned by Howe.

Babb was blacklisted and moved to Mexico City to keep the "graylisted" Howe from further abuse during the early years of the HUAC hearings.

Babb revived publishing books with the book The Lost Traveler, which was followed in 1970 by her book An Owl on Every Post. In 2004, Babb's shelved book Whose Names Are Unknown was published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

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