House of Earth
By Woody Guthrie
A Book Discussion Guide for One Book, One Tulsa prepared by Rebecca Howard, Readers’
Librarian
The Author
“Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) was one of America’s greatest folksingers and most influential songwriters.
Although born in Okemah, Oklahoma, Guthrie’s true home was all of America—“from California to the
New York island,” to take a line from his most famous song, “This Land Is Your Land.”
Woody’s songs celebrate the beauty and bounty of America and seek the truth about our country and its
people. He turned complex ideas about democracy, human rights, and economic equality into simple
songs that all Americans could embrace. Woody spoke for those who carried a heavy burden or had
come upon hard times. His words gave a voice to their struggle, and his songs gave them hope and
strength.”
Source: The Woody Guthrie Center retrieved from: http://woodyguthriecenter.org/about-woody/
About the Novel
Woody Guthrie wrote House of Earth in direct response to the Dust Bowl, an environmental catastrophe
caused by extreme drought and farming practices that stripped the land of ground cover that held the
soil in place. It was one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in America’s history lasting for a
full decade between 1930 and 1940. In April of 1935 a terrible dust storm, which would come to be
known as the Palm Sunday or Black Sunday storm, blew across the Southern Plains, including Pampa
Texas, where Guthrie was living at the time.
The term “Dust Bowl” is attributed to Robert Geiger, an Associated Press reporter who covered the
Black Sunday storm and wrote: “Three little words achingly familiar on a Western farmer’s tongue, rule
life in the dust bowl of the continent – ‘if it rains’.”
Guthrie was deeply affected by this storm and wrote a song to the survivors titled “Dust Storm
Disaster,” also known as “The Great Dust Storm”:
On the fourteenth day of April,
Of nineteen thirty-five
There struck the worst of dust storms
That ever filled the sky.
You could see that dust storm coming
It looked so awful black,
And through our little city,
It left a dreadful track.

See full lyrics at http://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Dust_Storm_Disaster.htm

Listen to the song as you watch the introduction to episode two of PBS’ The Dust Bowl by Ken
Burns: “The Great Dust Storm”
While traveling in New Mexico, Guthrie became transfixed by the adobe structures there. He purchased
a nickel pamphlet from the United States Department of Agriculture titled “Adobe or Sun-Dried Brick for
Farm Buildings” and became a zealous convert to the idea of building a house of earth.
The culmination of Guthrie’s Dust Bowl experiences and his exposure to the adobe homes of New
Mexico resulted in his writing what would become House of Earth. The novel is the story of
sharecroppers Tike and Ella May Hamlin and their struggle to create a place of their own in the harsh
and unforgiving landscape of the Texas panhandle.
While Guthrie finished the novel in 1947, it remained largely unknown for over half a century. One can
imagine the difficulty of having this novel published both for its politics and frank eroticism. Guthrie
only shared the manuscript with filmmaker Irving Lerner with the hope that it might be used as the basis
for a movie.
Decades later, in the process of assembling a Woody Guthrie collection, the University of Tulsa’s
McFarland Library discovered a typescript of House of Earth. Historian Douglas Brinkley and actor
Johnny Depp wrote the introduction and edited the book, which was published by Harper Luxe in 2013.
His music is the soil. His words—lyrics, memoirs, essays, and now fiction—are the adobe bricks.
He is of the people, by the people, for the people. Long may his truth be heard by all those who
care to listen, all those with hope in their heart and strength in their stride.
--From Douglas Brinkley and Johnny Depp’s Introduction to House of Earth
Discussion Questions
1. In the introduction to the novel, Depp and Brinkley write that a central premise of House of Earth is
that “wood rots!” Tike and Ella May Hamlin have an almost visceral hatred of their house, which has
failed to provide adequate shelter and safety. Tike’s grandmother Della told her children: “’Get a hold
of a piece of earth for yerself. Get a hold of it like this. And then fight. Fight to hold on to it like this.
Wood rots. Wood decays. This ain’t the country to get a hold of nothin’ made out of wood in’” (8).
What else is decaying or rotting in Tike and Ella May’s life? What other things might their dilapidated
home represent for them?
2. In stark contrast to wood is earth. Inspired by a government brochure, Tike longs to build a house of
earth that will withstand the elements. Why is this dream so elusive? Aside from shelter, what does the
house of earth represent?
3. The first chapter of the novel contains a very frank love scene between Tike and Ella May. Guthrie’s
daughter Nora, upon first reading the book, said that she felt that she was experiencing the “slightly
undomesticated animal side of him” (Caro). She explained, “These ideas of seeds and sex and
procreation and earth, and farm language and things like that . . . that’s what really struck me once
again is how he hammers home this really rough and rich life” (Neary). Why do you think Guthrie wrote
at such length about the sexual relationship between Mike and Ella May? What is the importance of
sex, desire, and love in the novel?
4. There is little narrative arc in this novel. How does Guthrie structure the novel? How does the
novel’s structure reveal theme? If asked to describe this novel in three words, what would you say?
5. In House of Earth, we see the isolation, the tedium, and the frustration of endemic poverty. At a
particularly poignant moment in the first chapter, Ella May cries out “Why has there got to be always
something to knock you down? Why is this country full of things that you can’t see, things that beat you
down, kick you down, throw you around, and kill out your hope?” (17). While written about a specific
time and place in history, could Ella May say the same things in 2013? What has changed about the
ways in which we address poverty? What remains the same?
6. In the third chapter, Guthrie introduces Blanche, an unmarried and highly educated woman who is
there to assist Ella May with childbirth. How does Blanche excite, threaten, challenge, and sadden Tike
Hamlin? Why do you think Woody Guthrie brought Blanche into the domestic narrative of Tike and Ella
May?
7. Guthrie described himself as a “hoping machine.” Where do you see hope in the House of Earth?
8. The word “fight” appears numerous times in House of Earth, but the object of this “fight” is not
always clear. Ella May reflects about Tike’s willingness to fight:
But. Fight what? Fight where? When? The wind, or the rain? Fight the moon and the stars?
Rip off his clothes and fight the season and fight the seasons and the clouds? Fight the wind and
fight the dust because it came at the wrong time, never at the right time? Fight the Sixty-Six
Highway over yonder because it ran in the wrong directions . . . It was all of this. It was more
than this. It was something that was so big that it was hard for words to say . . . (65-66)
Who or what is the antagonist in the novel? What forces are Tike and Ella May fighting against? Is their
fight futile or powerful?
9. Discuss the timeliness of House of Earth in light of recent extreme weather and disasters. How do
such catastrophes impact the poor and marginalized? Is there a collective responsibility to care for
others and preserve human dignity in these circumstances? What do people require to live with
dignity?
10. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck writes of those who left during the Dust Bowl. Guthrie,
familiar with Steinbeck’s novel, chooses to write of those who remained. In the final chapter, Ella May
says, “I’ll be one that’ll never take to that road that goes nowhere. I can stand out there in this yard on
a clear day and see the spot where I was born, see the old spot where Tike was born, I can see the old
spots where all of our folks were born. . . I am put here to stay” (238). Why do you think Guthrie chose
to write about those who stayed behind? Does he write convincingly of the individuals who endured the
Dust Bowl?
Sources and Further Reading:
Brinkley, D. & Depp, J. (2012 July 9). This land was his land. The New York Times. Retrieved
from www.nytimes.com
Caro, M. (2013 February 17). Woody Guthrie’s ‘House of earth’ a work from Dust Bowl-era Woody.
The Tulsa World. Retrieved from www.tulsaworld.com.
Lipton, G. (2013 April 9). House of earth by Woody Guthrie. Paste Magazine. Retrieved from
www.pastemagazine.com.
National Weather Service. “The black Sunday dust storm of 14 April 1935.” Retrieved from
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=events-19350414.
Neary, L. (2013 February 5). Woody Guthrie’s ‘House of earth” calls ‘this land’ home. Retrieved from
www.npr.org.
Oklahoma Climatological Survey. “Black Sunday remembered.” Accessed 30 May 2013 at
http://climate.ok.gov/index.php/site/page/news/black_sunday_remembered.