Rebel Imaginaries

Amid the global catastrophe of the Great Depression, California became a wellspring for some of the era's most inventive and imaginative political movements. As devastation deepened worldwide, the multiracial laboring populations who formed the basis ofCalifornia's economy gave rise to an oppositional culture that challenged the modes of racialism, nationalism, and rationalism that guided modernization during preceding decades. From the upsurge of rural agricultural strike activity in 1930 to the acceleration of urban defense mobilization upon U.S. entry into the Second World War in 1941, Rebel Imaginaries tells the story of that oppositional culture's emergence, examines its major contours, and illuminates how it impacted the lives of those involved--