Willa Cather

My Antonia Willa Cather

My Ántonia was Cather's first novel to be considered a masterpiece-an evaluation that still holds true today. Published in 1918, the book established her reputation. Cather continued the focus on place and the emphasis on working-class people that had been ongoing in American literature since the local color movement of the late 1860s, but she brought the focus to a locale-America's High Plains--that previously had not been explored in such depth. The novel's characters are as important as setting, however, and Cather included social commentary on women's rights as well as veiled references to sex. Author and columnist Rebecca Traister, when asked by Ezra Klein during his New York Times podcast on March 19, 2021 if there was a book she rereads for the "sheer beauty of the prose," replied, ""For the beauty of the writing, I mean, I would say that my go-to is actually My Antonia by Willa Cather, which is a book I first read in high school and found slightly boring but beautiful, and then read again in my 20s and was just totally enraptured by and then have gone back to again and again and again as a beautiful piece of writing."