The Ghost of Tom Joad guitar work and the lyrics on many of the tracks are a somber reflection of life in the mid-1990s in America and Mexico. The character of Tom Joad entered the American consciousness in John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Grapes of Wrath", set against the economic hardships of the Great Depression. This spawned a film version starring Henry Fonda, which in turn inspired folk singer Woody Guthrie to pen "The Ballad of Tom Joad". The album's release was followed by Springsteen's solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, which ran from 1995 to 1997 and consisted of mostly small
The Family (Ba Jin novel) which makes "family" a more general concept rather than limiting it to this particular family. In her Editor's Note, Lang discusses the history of the text, pointing out that certain passages, the anarchist elements, had been deleted from the 1958 Foreign Languages Press edition. The Anchor edition restored three prefaces by the author, newly translated, as well as some of the omitted passages. A play and two films were based on the novel. The play was adapted by famous playwright Cao Yu in 1941. A Mainland Chinese TV adaptation, starring Huang Lei, Lu Yi and Huang Yi, was produced in