My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918)

The immigrant experience among the pioneers on America's Great Plains.

Classics Review: My Ántonia at first simply seems to be Willa Cather (1873-1947) telling a random collection of stories about the backbreaking task of settling the Nebraska prairie. Characters come and go, the titular Ántonia doesn't appear for chapters at a time. The chilling wolf story comes from Russia. "I suppose it hasn't any form," a character says. The more the reader mulls over the book, however, the more layers there are to peel back. Our narrator, the native-born Jim Burden, does everything right, goes off to college, becomes a lawyer, and ends up miserably alone in a loveless marriage. His childhood friend Ántonia, a Czech immigrant, goes her own passionate way, lives on her own terms wrong decisions and all, arrives at fulfillment and happiness that Jim can only try to join. The immigrants are poor and struggling, but their families and culture are richer and stronger than the American-born. My Ántonia is owned by tough, independent women: "I like to be like a man," Ántonia says, showing off muscles work-hardened by the farm. The narrator's love interest (another immigrant woman) states, "I don't want a husband ... men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers ... I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody." Although he wishes it was, the relationship between Jim, he's four years younger, and Ántonia isn't romantic. Instead there's a lifelong friendship, a deeper love. The center of the story is the hard labor of common people, the constant worry of farm work. A subject that, perhaps because it sounds deadly dull (sorry Nebraska), is all too rare in literature. Cather makes it work. The attitudes toward the immigrants are telling. They're placed in a separate train car, a character notes "you were likely to get diseases from foreigners," town boys lust after the immigrant girls but aren't allowed to date them. There are also many moments of living history, life on the plains, how things were done. Eugene O'Neill's famous actor father even comes in for a mention. My first book by Willa Cather, My Ántonia was a happy surprise, deceptively simple and powerful.  [4½★]