Grace Lumpkin
| Born | March 3, 1891 Milledgeville, Georgia |
|---|---|
| Died | March 3, 1980 (aged 89) Columbia, South Carolina |
| Occupation | Writer, novelist |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 1930s, 1960s |
| Genre | Fiction - Proletarian literature, Feminist literature |
| Subject | American social injustices |
| Notable works | To Make My Bread (1932) |
| Notable awards | Gorky Prize 1933 |
| Spouse | Michael Intrator (divorced) |
| Children | (none) |
sh
Grace Lumpkin (March 3, 1891 – March 23, 1980) was an American writer of proletarian literature, focusing most of her works on the Depression era and the rise and fall of favor surrounding communism in the United States. Most important of four books was her first, To Make My Bread (1932), which won the Gorky Prize in 1933.
Grace Lumpkin was born on March 3, 1891, in Milledgeville, Georgia, the ninth of eleven children born to Annette Caroline Morris and William Wallace Lumpkin. In around 1900 she moved with her family to South Carolina. She grew up in a very religious, prominent but economically unstable aristocratic Georgian family.
In around 1910, William moved his family one final time, to a farm in Richland County. While in South Carolina, Grace witnessed firsthand the suffering of black and white sharecroppers and laborers. Black laborers performed fieldwork on the Lumpkin family farm, and the Lumpkin children attended school with white children from the "poorest classes". Just three months after the family began to farm, her father died and the family's financial health suffered.
Lumpkin worked at a variety of jobs before graduating from Brenau College in Gainesville, Georgia in 1911. At Brenau, she was a member of Phi Mu and she wrote the author of the Phi Mu Creed. She volunteered in France for a year, and then returned to Georgia. In Georgia she worked for the YMCA, eventually organized an adult night school for farmers and their wives, and worked at home as a demonstration agent. During most of the summers she lived in the mountains of North Carolina, staying with mill workers, sharecroppers, and other laborers, which convinced her that these workers could better their lives only by means of trade unions. Her stay in the mountains introduced her to the families about which she wrote in her first novel.
...
Wikipedia