Sanora Babb
| Sanora Babb | |
|---|---|
Sanora Babb
|
|
| Born |
April 21, 1907 Red Rock, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Died | December 31, 2005 (aged 98) Hollywood Hills, California, U.S. |
| Pen name | Sylvester Davis |
| Occupation | Novelist, editor, poet |
| Nationality | American |
| Notable works |
An Owl on Every Post Whose Names Are Unknown |
| Spouse | James Wong Howe |
Sanora Babb (April 21, 1907 – December 31, 2005) was an American novelist, poet, and literary editor. She was the wife of Chinese American cinematographer James Wong Howe.
Sanora Babb was born in Otoe territory in what is now Oklahoma, though neither her mother nor father was Otoe. Her father, Walter, a professional gambler, moved Sanora and her sister Dorothy to a one-room dugout on a broomcorn farm settled by her grandfather near Lamar, Colorado.
Her experiences were fictionalized in her novels An Owl on Every Post and The Lost Traveler. Though she did not attend school until she was 11, she managed to graduate from high school as valedictorian. She began studying at the University of Kansas but she could not afford to continue there and after one year transferred to the Junior College in Garden City, Kansas. Her first work in journalism was with the Garden City Herald, and several of her articles were reprinted by the Associated Press. She moved to Los Angeles in 1929 to work for the Los Angeles Times, but due to the U.S. stock market crash of 1929 the newspaper retracted its offer. She was occasionally homeless through the Depression, sleeping in Lafayette Park. She eventually found secretarial work with Warner Brothers and wrote scripts for radio station KFWB. She joined the John Reed Club and was a member of the US Communist Party for 11 years, visiting the Soviet Union in 1936, but she dropped out of the party due to the authoritarian structure and in-fighting.
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