Days of Sand by Aimee de Jongh

In 1937, twenty-two-year-old John Clark is rushing down the streets of Washington, D.C. to make an interview. He runs into a newsboy, scattering his newspapers on the sidewalk. But John can't stop to help - he needs to keep his appointment.

In the interview, John tells the man that he lives in New York City, working for a local newspaper as a photographer. The interviewer recognizes his name, which is the same as his father who was a well-known photographer. The man isn't sure John is the right person for the job when he sees that most of his portfolio is filled with photographs of the Black community. They are looking for a photographer to take photos in the south.

John pleads with him to give him a chance, that he can cover any subject. The interviewer then admits that his work is outstanding and he has the job. He learns that this government agency wants to send him to photograph farmers in "No man's land.", a phrase being used to describe the panhandle of Oklahoma. The interviewer explains that after the Wall Street crash in October, 1929, the country also crashed and farmers were hit especially hard.

Mary, the assistant in the office, tells John he will be in the area for a month and will send his film back by post to be developed in their lab. John worries that his photographs will not be good enough but Mary tells him that one way to get impactful photographs is to "help the truth a little" by staging the subjects. She also explains what the Dust Bowl is. Pulling out a dusty map, Mary explains that it covers parts of Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and the panhandle of Oklahoma. The name comes from the dust storms that now blow through this area, blocking out the sun. Because of the drought and the storms, people are leaving to find a better life. Because of the drought and storms, people are leaving to find a better life. They want his photographs to show what life in the "Dust Bowl" is like. John is given a script - a list of subjects to photograph.

So in the middle of the Great Depression, John returns home, stunned that he has landed a job. As he is packing for the trip, his mother gives him a photograph of his father telling him that his father did love him but had trouble showing it. And so early the next morning, John sets off for Oklahoma in what turns out to be a life-changing experience.

Discussion

Days of Sand is a historical graphic novel about life during the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, in 1937. This richly illustrated novel effectively portrays life during the Dust Bowl and how challenging it was for the people who lived in the southern plains during this economic and environmental catastrophe.

The Dust Bowl, as briefly explained in the novel, encompassed areas in Kansas, Colorado, the Texas panhandle, the Oklahoma panhandle, and parts of New Mexico. The problems began in the 1920's when land not suited for agriculture was planted and farmers began to abandon soil conservation practices. After the stock market crash in 1929, an economic depression began. This was followed in the 1930's by a series of droughts, each one worsened by the fact that the land did not recover fully from the previous one. In total there were four droughts: 1930-31, 1934, 1936 and the last in 1939-40. 

There were a number of factors that came together to create the dust bowl. The land had been quickly settled a century earlier without much understanding of the ecology and environment of the southern plains. The methods of farming used by these initial settlers were better suited to the Eastern United States with its regular rainfall. In the southern plains, there were periods of plentiful rain but also short droughts from which the region recovered. In the novel, Betty Harrison tells John Clark how when her grandparents settled in Oklahoma in 1910, it was a paradise of "green grass, blue skies, clean air..."

With the economic downturn of the Great Depression, farmers began to cultivate land that was not suited for farming and to abandon what few conservation practices they were already using. It was a matter of simple economics: they needed to farm as much land as possible to make enough money to live. Mary tells John Clark, that "they brought this on themselves" is only partly true, as outside pressures such as economics also played an important role.

Days of Sand portrays the personal journey of fictional photographer John Clark as he travels into the heart of the catastrophe, ostensibly to photograph conditions so the government can understand what's happening. His journey begins as a photography job but becomes personal when he experiences the realities of life in the dust bowl. As he changes his focus from trying to get photographs from the script he's been given to actually getting to know the people, he begins to see the human side of the tragedy. The loss of a young mother has such a profound effect on John, that he comes to understand that no photograph can capture the pain, the loss and the heartbreak her family experiences. It is his belief that a photograph cannot capture the complexities of an event like the Dust Bowl, that photographs can be deceiving and can fail to capture the emotions, "...colors, tastes, scents and sounds."

In a letter to the man who hired him, John writes, "If I had to describe my time in the Dust Bowl...I would talk about the stinging pain I felt when the flurries of dust hit my skin. I would talk about how dust could make you fell you're suffocating with every breath. I would talk about the slow decay of the human spirit after endless days of sand. None of that can be captured in a photograph." He resigns believing he became a photographer in an attempt to please his abusive father. He hopes that others will have the courage to photograph their lives.

Interestingly, in the back matter, De Jongh has included many interesting black and white photographs, and a brief write-up on the Farm Security Administration, the Photography Program, the impact of this program, and some of the iconic photographs that captured life during the Dust Bowl. Some of these photographs were inspirational in other ways - for example author John Steinbeck used the FSA archive in his research for his book, The Grapes of Wrath.

Days of Sand is a beautiful graphic novel, with wonderful illustrations that complement this poignant story about life in the Dust Bowl of the 1930's. Highly recommended.

Book Details:

Days of Sand by Aimee de Jongh
London, UK:  Self MadeHero    2022
277 pp.