Joan London (American writer)
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Joan London (January 15, 1901 – January 18, 1971) was an American writer and the older of two daughters born to
Jack London John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...
and his first wife, Elizabeth "Bess" Maddern London.


Personal life

Joan's sibling, Becky, was born on October 20, 1902. Both children were born in
Piedmont, California Piedmont is a small city located in Alameda County, California, United States, completely surrounded by the city of Oakland. Its residential population was 11,270 at the 2020 census. The name comes from the region of Piedmont in Italy, and it me ...
. Their father left in 1903, and was only able to visit them at their home following a divorce in 1905. Due to his frequent travels, he did not see his daughters for long stretches of time. The daughters enjoyed a comfortable middle-class childhood, with music, dance and drama lessons. Nonetheless, Joan in particular suffered from an ongoing conflict because Bess refused to allow the girls to visit Jack on his ranch. When she was ten, Joan's letters began to include her mother's various requests for additional funds. Being placed in this difficult spot made her the brunt of her father's anger at times. London changed his will in favor of everything going to his second wife, Charmian Kittredge London, charging her to support his first family. Following his death in 1916, the discovery proved disadvantageous to his daughters. Joan attended the
University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...
, majoring in history. Following graduation, in 1921 she married Park Abbott and had a son, Bart. She divorced him in 1924 following physical and emotional abuse. She supported herself through public speaking around the country, her usual topics her favor or Socialist themes. She wed Slavic Language professor Charles Malamuth, a committed Stalinist, in 1926. They divorced in 1930 and remarried soon afterward. During a long visit in Russia in 1930, they befriended poet
e. e. cummings Edward Estlin Cummings, who was also known as E. E. Cummings, e. e. cummings and e e cummings (October 14, 1894 - September 3, 1962), was an American poet, painter, essayist, author and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobi ...
. Later, cummings featured the couple in ''
EIMI Eimi may refer to: * EIMI, a 1933 book by E. E. Cummings about a 1931 trip to the Soviet Union * ''eimì'', an Ancient Greek verbs meaning "to be" * Kuwaiti Persian Kuwaiti Persian, known in Kuwait as ʿīmi (sometimes spelled Eimi)Written in A ...
'', with Joan referred to as Turkess or Harem. Joan's notes about the country focus on the condition of women and writers. The couple separated in 1934 and divorced two years later. During 1934–35, Joan went to Hollywood, where she tried to break into screenwriting while running a personal assistance service. She had a novel, ''320 Panoramic'' pass around New York publishers without success.
Twentieth Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film studio, film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm o ...
hired her to write publicity for its movie based on her father's
The Call of the Wild ''The Call of the Wild'' is a short adventure novel by Jack London, published in 1903 and set in Yukon, Canada, during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, when strong sled dogs were in high demand. The central character of the novel is a dog named Bu ...
, and invited her to the set. Most of her friends were of the Hungarian refugee group that were becoming key directors, designers and actors. Returning to the San Francisco Bay area, Joan met a fellow committed to
Trotskyism Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a rev ...
, Barney Mayes. They lived together and she joined him in editing the weekly publication of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific. Waterfront leader Harry Bridges threatened their lives for being against his tactics, and later accused them of being anti-working class and against the Soviet Union. During the longshoremen strikes of 1936–37, beatings and murders, most unsolved, occurred. Joan and Barney wrote ''Corpse With Knee Action'' under the pseudonym B. J. Maylon. A related story of the waterfront conflicts, ''Embarcadero,'' was unpublished. During the 1940s, Joan London worked for the California Labor Federation in
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
. She worked there over twenty years, writing speeches, reports, and the weekly newsletter. She continued to be active in the
Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...
branches of the
Communist Party USA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
, then aligned with the Allies during WWII. She married Charles L. "Indian" Miller in 1948. Although he was not political, Miller appears in the fat FBI file kept on Joan. She was on many leftist or union-focused mailing lists. Ironically, Charles Malamuth, no longer leftist, was an informer. She died of
throat cancer Head and neck cancer develops from tissues in the lip and oral cavity (mouth), larynx (throat), salivary glands, nose, sinuses or the skin of the face. The most common types of head and neck cancers occur in the lip, mouth, and larynx. Symptoms ...
in 1971, at the age of 70. She was
cremated Cremation is a method of final disposition of a dead body through burning. Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite and as an alternative to burial. In some countries, including India and Nepal, cremation on an open-air pyre i ...
. Her son was instructed to throw her ashes into the ocean, but could not bring himself to do it, and so he buried them in
Yosemite Yosemite National Park ( ) is an American national park in California, surrounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an ar ...
.


Writing career

Joan London's first publication was a serial published in the ''
Oakland Tribune The ''Oakland Tribune'' is a weekly newspaper published in Oakland, California, by the Bay Area News Group (BANG), a subsidiary of MediaNews Group. Founded in 1874, the ''Tribune'' rose to become an influential daily newspaper. With the declin ...
'' from December 6, 1926 to February 24, 1927. ''Sylvia Coventry'' is reminiscent of her father's love triad novels. Sylvia rebuffs a proposal and moves to Hawaii to work on as the welfare worker on a plantation. There she is bewitched by an ominous intruder who provokes her into various incarnations. This one attempt at fiction convinced her it was not her metier. Trained in historical research, during the late 1930s, Joan researched ''Jack London and His Times'', a biography of her father. To do so, she received permission from Charmian Kittredge London to view her father's archive at the
Huntington Library The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) and Arabella Huntington (c.1851–1924) in San Mar ...
; being cut out of her father's will, she had no independent right. She co-authored ''So Shall Ye Reap: The Story of Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement'' with Henry Anderson. They provide an early history of the movement, beginning with Father Thomas McCullough and
Ernesto Galarza Ernesto Galarza (August 15, 1905–June 22, 1984) was a Mexican-American labor organizer, activist, professor, poet, writer, storyteller, and a key figure in the history of immigrant farmworker organization in California. He had a dream of giving b ...
. They also fault Mexico for failing to provide a sustainable economy for its poor. Her son Bart Abbott ensured the posthumous publication of her memoir ''Jack London and his Daughters''. There she emphasized the trauma of divorce on children.


References


External links

* Helen Abbott, Introduction to Jack London Family, http://www.jack-london.org/joan-london/08-intro.htm {{DEFAULTSORT:London, Joan 20th-century American biographers American women biographers 20th-century American memoirists 1901 births 1971 deaths People from Piedmont, California Deaths from throat cancer Writers from California Deaths from esophageal cancer American women memoirists 20th-century American women writers