Adela Pineda Publishes Book on Steinbeck
Prof. Adela Pineda has published a new book, Steinbeck y México. The book explores US/Mexico relations through the lens of Steinbeck, film, and literature on both sides of the Rio Grande from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Pineda said she found that Steinbeck’s intellectual anxieties from the Great Depression through the beginning of the Cold War were inextricably linked to Mexico.
“Steinbeck’s intellectual anxieties (the importance of popular culture to shape a national imaginary during the Great Depression, the waning of community in a context of technological development during World War II, and the questioning of revolutionary purpose during the Cold War) were irremediably linked to Mexico,” Pineda said. “The rise and fall of Mexican nationalism, import substitution industrialization, and the emergence of insurrectionary movements in the countryside reclaiming the legacy of the Mexican Revolution, is the context of my travels with Steinbeck through Mexico.”
