What a beautiful and wonderful surprise this was. Going in, I knew that this was (1) about Nebraska, and (2) in the realm of things I usually like. I know very little about Nebraska except that there is lots of corn, and they are passionate about their college football. So, though I expected to like [My Antonia], I wasn’t sure how well I could relate to it. Well, it swept me up into a very intimate tale of Jim Burden who moves to Nebraska as a child and befriends a Bohemian family, especially their daughter Antonia. The story follows their early life on the farm, and then move to town, where Jim goes to school and Antonia works. We then follow Jim to college where he and another of the country girls develop a relationship and he learns of Antonia’s troubles. Finally, we are left with a view of Antonia, her many children, and her farm. Country girls: “…I can remember something unusual and engaging about each of them. Physically they were almost a race apart, and out-of-door work had given them a vigor which, when they got over their first shyness on coming to town, developed into a positive carriage and freedom of movement, and made them conspicuous among Black Hawk women.” Vs. Town girls: “When one danced with them, their bodies never moved inside their clothes; their muscles seemed to ask but one thing – not to be disturbed. I remember those girls merely as faces in the schoolroom, gay and rosy, or listless and dull, cut off below the shoulders, like cherubs…” This country girl appreciates those descriptions. Cather has a way of describing the landscape that makes you almost taste it. “Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons. It must have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that made detail so precious.” It has the melancholy texture of home. There are certain smells, plants, and sounds that instantly transport me to my youth. There is a feeling about the place one grows up that is hard to describe. There is a love that wells up that is not attached to an explicit memory but exists in some larger connection with a place and its people. But there is also the tension of success. There is the idea that leaving and making your way is success, while staying home is a compromise. For someone like me who never wants to live in the home of my youth again, there is also the struggle of infusing your new life with the things of your past that were special to you. There is the urge to move forward, while not forgetting. It is something I think Cather shows us through the immigrants – those who wish to assimilate completely, those who wish to maintain their old life, and those who need to find a balance between the two. For me it was extremely powerful and evoked thoughts that I had not been able to fully form before – and this is the reason I read. And finally, on Antonia: “Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade – that grew stronger with time. In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one’s first primer: Antonia kicking her bare legs against the sides of my pony when we came home in triumph with our snake; Antonia in her black shawl and fur cap, as she stood by her father’s grave in the snowstorm; Antonia coming in with her work-team along the evening sky-line. She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true. I had not been mistaken. She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one’s breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.” (read less)

What a beautiful and wonderful surprise this was. Going in, I knew that this was (1) about Nebraska, and (2) in the realm of things I usually like. I know very little about Nebraska except that there is lots of corn, and they are passionate about their college football. So, though I expected to like [My Antonia], I wasn’t sure how well I could relate to it. Well, it swept me up into a (read more)

The narrator is Jim Burden - a prairie boy who moves to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. He is telling the story of himself and his friendship with Antonia, an immigrant girl from Bohemia which stretches three decades although most of it takes place in childhood. The recollection involves several settler-families on the prairie and later on in the town of Lincoln. Nothing more needs to be told about this story. It's just marvelous, entertaining and exciting. Based on Cathers own experiences moving to Nebraska as a child. It is very realistic, one doesn't want to depart with these characters - Antonia is a fascinating character torn between her new hard life in Nebraska and her old home in Bohemia. A hot-tempered girl, a survivor, resourcefull and hard-working. But personally I bonded more with the narrator himself. Admired him in his many decisions and thoughts. There's so much truth in this story, so many real human emotions and experiences told with nuance and depth. Just read it. Or better: Listen to the wonderful audiobook read by Jeff Cummings. We reached the edge of the field, where our ways parted. I took her hands and held them against my breast, feeling once more how strong and warm and good they were, those brown hands, and remembering how many kind things they had done for me. I held them now a long while, over my heart. About us it was growing darker and darker, and I had to look hard to see her face, which I meant always to carry with me; the closest, realest face, under all the shadows of women’s faces, at the very bottom of my memory. (read less)

The narrator is Jim Burden - a prairie boy who moves to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. He is telling the story of himself and his friendship with Antonia, an immigrant girl from Bohemia which stretches three decades although most of it takes place in childhood. The recollection involves several settler-families on the prairie and later on in the town of Lincoln. Nothing more needs (read more)