reviews

Bravo Betty Blanks! Your book is excellent. Wilma's story had to be told and you got the job done. I will treasure this book for the rest of my days.

This beautiful book, a biography of the poet, Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, is written straight from the heart. It is as authentic as its wonderful subject.

Betty Blanks is a skillful writer who represents Wilma's story in an uplifting way. Recently released, the biography of Wilma McDaniel gives readers insight into this soft spoken and talented lady who was named the Poet Laureate of Tulare.

For those wishing an initial or deeper acquaintance with this "ancestral voice" and "California Walt Whitman" (per Dust Bowl and Central Valley scholar Gerald Haslam), Betty Blanks' biography of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel will serve as an invaluable introduction as well as a springboard for further exploration.

There is a new book I must tell you about, a biography of the Tulare Okie poet laureate Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel. What it really tells us is what it takes to be a writer in this world, a poet of ordinary people, a chronicler of culture being dissipated by consumerism. Wilma's work was her way of broadcasting seed, the seeds of life, claiming what it takes to make a life worthwhile. This book is a faithful rendering of what it took Wilma.

A new book by Betty Blanks, Pick Up Your Name and Write, shows "the encourager" Cornelia Jessey (pen name for Cornelia Sussman) working magic yet again, on another great and marginalized artist. Fans of California literature will be fascinated by the new book by Betty Blanks, a longtime friend of the late poet, Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel. Read the excerpt in California Desert Art.

Pick Up Your Name and Write is equally testimony to those who see the talents within others, who saw a hidden literary gem shining within the dusty crop covered land of the San Joaquin Valley. They aided and encouraged McDaniel's journey. In the end, Blanks' book is a celebration of relationships as much as it is to poetry and migration stories.