Book ID: CBB807072736

Boxcar Politics: The Hobo in U.S. Culture and Literature, 1869-1956 (2014)

unapi

Lennon, John (Author)


University of Massachusetts Press


Publication Date: 2014
Physical Details: viii, 220 pages, bibliography, index
Language: English

The hobo is a figure ensconced in the cultural fabric of the United States. Once categorized as a member of a homeless army who ought to be jailed or killed, the hobo has evolved into a safe, grandfatherly exemplar of Americana. Boxcar Politics reestablishes the hobo's political thorns. John Lennon maps the rise and demise of the political hobo from the nineteenth-century introduction of the transcontinental railroad to the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. Intertwining literary, historical, and theoretical representations of the hobo, he explores how riders and writers imagined alternative ways that working-class people could use mobility to create powerful dissenting voices outside of fixed hierarchal political organizations. Placing portrayals of hobos in the works of Jack London, Jim Tully, John Dos Passos, and Jack Kerouac alongside the lived reality of people hopping trains (including hobos of the IWW, the Scottsboro Boys, and those found in numerous long-forgotten memoirs), Lennon investigates how these marginalized individuals exerted collective political voices through subcultural practices. (Worldcat)

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Reviewed By

Review Michael Matejka (Spring-Summer 2017) Review of "Boxcar Politics: The Hobo in U.S. Culture and Literature, 1869-1956". Railroad History (pp. 100-101). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB807072736/

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Authors & Contributors
Peter Tip
Schweiterman, Joseph P.
Waite, Thornton
Candacy A. Taylor
Michael Ra-shon Hall
Richard Cox
Concepts
Travel
Railroads
Land transportation
Mobility
African Americans
Segregation
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
Places
United States
Western states (U.S.)
Midwestern states (U.S.)
Virginia (U.S.)
Colorado (U.S.)
Institutions
Southern Railway (U.S.)
Illinois Central Railroad
Pullman Palace Car Company
Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway Company
Yellowstone National Park
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
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