 It also initiated a mass migration to California of "Okies" (to use the disparaging term common in California) in search of a better life, an image that would be popularized in American culture by John Steinbeck's novel, "The Grapes of Wrath".The book, with photographs by Dorothea Lange, and songs of Woody Guthrie tales of woe from the era.The negative images of the "Okie" as a sort of rootless migrant laborer living in a near-animal state of scrounging for food greatly offended many Oklahomans.