View of government funded by these Television Companies and more including comcast. You think this is just a Community Center . It is more than that. Comcast is creating wifi enabled places so students have the tools to be ready for anything comcast support cspan along with these television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] in partnership with the library of congress, cspan brings you books that shaped america. Our series explores key worvetion literature that have had a profound impact on the country. In this program, Willa Cathers 1918 novel, my antonia. Set on the nebraska prairie at the end of the 19th century, its told through the reminiscences of jim, an orphan by, who traveled west to live with his grandparents he befriends the daughter of their immigrant neighbor, antonia. When jim and his grandparents move into town, antonia begins to work for their neighbors. Jim goes to college and returns less and less. As the book comes to a close, he reunites with ant knee yasm after years struggle, she has 10 children and a farm of her own, her version of the American Dream. The novel was wellreceived and mirrored part of waiters own life. She traveled west as a young child where she met the inspiration for the novel. Red cloud and its people played prominent role in her work. Later in life, in 1934, she said, my antonia, in my opinion, is by far the best of all my contributions. Host welcome to books that shaped america, our cspan series that looks at how books throughout our history have influenced who we are today in. Partnership with the library of congress this 10week series has been exploring different topics, viewpoints, and eras and were glad youre joining us for this walk through history. So far in the series, weve looked at early america, its growth, the era of slavery, and the development of the law. Weve also started to explore classic novels, including huckleberry finn. Tonight its the immigrant experience and a novel by the awardwinning author, willa cather. My antonia, from 1918, is a book which introduced readers to life on the prairie. It became a classic and put cather at the forefront of american writers. Our guest tonight to help us learn about the impact my antonia had on our literature and our nation is melissa hom sted. Shes an english professor at the university of nebraska, lincoln. Shes director the cather project. Shes coeditor of the complete letters of willa cather. And shes author of the only wonderful thing the only wonderful things, the Creative Partnership of willa cather and edith lewis. When did willa cather come into your life . Guest the first time i read cather was in 1980, one of my favorite professors at teacher, at Freedom High School in bethlehem bethlehem, pennsylvania, suggested i read cather because i was looking for a topic for a College Application essay looking for people alive in 1902 to invite to a dinner. I ended up reading my antonia and oh pioneers in one weekend. I liked oh pioneers better at first but by time i graduated from college id read my antonia more than 25 times. Host theyre part of the prairie trilogy. Guest theres not real y a prairie trill jism one book thats usually included in that trilogy was set in colorado, not on the prairie at all, though they all three do feature immigrant or children of immigrant heroinies. Host when my antonia came out in 1918 did it have an impact . Guest it had a strong critical reception and had several strong reviews. Cathers her said there werent many strong reviews and piem didnt understand it but that was not true, i have read several strong reviews from the time. I think one the things she wanted to do was make people understand the importance of immigration to nebraska and in particular the heroine of the novel was bohemian or czech, a population being targeted for exclusion from immigration at the time indeed were effectively minimi or excluded inhe 14 immigration act because etern europeans the portion of allowable immigration under that law. So i dont think that that part succeeded. Her argument, her proimmigration argument didnt succeed, but i do think that it opened up the pioneer experience and in wellregarded, critically regarded literature. Host what about womens issues . Guest im not sure cather was foe cushion on womens issues as womens issues. She herself wasnt a feminist. The narrator of my antonia is a man who actually criticized feminists. He doesnt criticize them. Theres a narrator of the introduction who is willa cather, though not named. Jim burden is introduced and the narrator, willa cather, criticizes his wife, general vaive whitney, because shes involved in suffrage and supports labor unions, so feminism isnt really advanced as a political cause in the novel. Host our partner in this endeavor, books that shaped america is the library of congress we traveled up there to see an original edition of my antonia. Heres what it looks like. Heres what the library said about my antonia. This novel explores both the immigrant experience and the issues facing women in the move west across the continent. This is taking place in the late 1800s. Correct . Guest correct. 18 80s and 18 90s and it flashes forward at the end to about the moment of publication. Host nebraska became a state i believe in 162. That was it like in the late 18 80s when ant nia when antonia was out there . Guest well, it was for the European American pie neerks whether they were settled americans who were just called americans, or more recent immigrants it was a challenging experience. Indigenous people had recently been removed, they seem to be long gone in the gavel but they were only about 10 years gone from webster county. Willa cathers aunt mary wait a we could. Amanda smith cather, she wrote to her classmates at Mount Holyoke college about native Peoples Still hunting in the area through the 18 20s. For willa it seemed new and empty but it hadnt been long. Host do they play a role in the novel . Guest no. Theres a circle where they are described as having its debated were they torturing prison norse training horses, but it was a faint circle in the grass. Host is that an oversight in your view by cate her guest no, i dont think its an oversight. I think its the way the dominant culture operated. You just banished people who were there before, it would have been the pawnee. Host describe blackhawk, nebraska. Guest its a more populous place then than it is now,t was the basis for red cloud. It had about 10,000 people then, about 1,000 now. It was a stop on the train. There were traveling troupes of artists coming thru, theyd come through from denver, omaha, chismg it was a bulsing market town for an agriculture area but still a small town and you get a fair sense of that in the novel, a small town where Everybody Knows everyones business, jim burden feels bored when he moves into town with his grandparents. Host some of the main characters are based on people willa knew. Was jim burden based on somebody she knew . Guest there have been theories about his name and where it might have comefrom some of the experiences in the book are her own experiences she gives to jim. Other she is didnt really directly have. For example, the pro to type for antonia, her father had killed himself before cather and her family moved to the area, that was a story she heard not something she experienced. Other people, so the miner family that become the harvetion rlings, in particular, mrs. Harling, told two of her daughters that was as close as she came to a portrait of a straight up person. Otherwise she was mixing together bits and pieces of various people and adapting them to her own purposes. Host if a student came to you and said, i want to read my antonia, what advice would you give . Guest i would sago ahead and read it. Its up to you whether or not you enjoy it and what you make of out. Its a book for me that has changed over the years. Ive read it so many times, i find Different Things in it every time. Theres certainly a lot of strands that you can work your way through. Host Willa Cathers statue was inveiled at the u. S. Capitol this summer. We want to show you a little bit of the event. You were at the unveiling. Guest yes, i was. Host what was that like . Guest it was entertaining. It was also very crowded. Youll see, i think, i dont know if well see that shes next to chief Standing Bear who also was brought in as one of the representatives of nebraska. They replaced William Jennings bryan and jay sterling morgan as the statues in statuary hall. As i went over today to visit the statue and get a picture of myself with it, shes not in the rotunda because they can only have 37 statues in the rotunda at a time, because of the weight, they cant support all of them, so shes in the visitors center. Host the sculpture, whats unique about him . Guest he was the first africanamerican to sculpt one of the sculptures mand maybe and maybe any of the part in the capitol he was from washington, d. C. And but now teaches in omaha. Host at the same event, there was a reading from my antonia. I first heard of antonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the midland plain of north america. I was 10 years old, i had lost both my father and mother in a year and my virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparent whs lived in nebraska. I traveled in the care of a mountain boy, jake, one of the hands on my fathers ole farm under the blue ridge who was now going west to work for my grandfather. We went all the way in day coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of the journey. Beyond chicago we were under the protection of a friendly passenger conductor who knew all about the country to which we were going and gave us a great deal of advice in exchange for our confidence. Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead, there was a family from across the water. Whose destination was the same as ours. I do not remember crossing the Missouri River or anything about the long days journey through nebraska. Probably by that time i had crossed so many rivers that i was dull to them. The only thing very noticeable about nebraska was that it was still all day long nebraska. [laughter] i had been sleeping kurld up in a red plush seat for a long while when we reached blackhawk we stumbled down from the train to a wooden siding where men were running about with lanterns. I couldnt see any town or even distant lights. We were surrounded by utter darkness. In the red glow from the fire box, a group of people stud huddled together on the platform encumbered by bundles and boxes. I knew this must be the immigrant family the conductor had told us about. The woman wore a fringed shawl tide over her head and carried a little tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if it were a baby. There was an old man, tall and stooped, two half grown boys and a little girl clung to her mothers skirts. Presently, a man with a lantern approached them and began to talk, shouting and exclaiming. I perked up my ears for it was positive the first time i had ever heard a foreign tongue. Another lantern came along, a bantering voice called out, he willlow, are you mr. Burdens folks . Fur its me youre looking for. Im otto. Im mr. Burdens hired man and im here to drive you. He led us to a hitching bar where two farm wagons were tide and i saw the foreign family crowding into one of them. The other was for us. Jake sat on the front seat with otto and i rode on the straw in the bottom of the wagon box covered up with a buffalo hide. The imgrans rumbled off into the empty darkness and we followed them. I tried to go to sleep but the jolting made me bite my tongue and i soon began to ache all over. Cautiously i slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my knees and peered over the wagon. There seemed to be nothing to see. No fences. No creeks. No trees. No hills or fields. If there was a road, i could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land. Not a country at all. But the material out of which clints are made. Host professor, you were reciting along with laura lunsdenblack there. She talks about the country almost as a character. Guest yes. One of Willa Cathers contemporaries, mary austin, wrote about regionalism in literature. She was unhappy with cathers representations of the u. S. In the 19 20s, but said the what makes regionalism regionalism is the land is a character. You can say that of cathers nebraska book. Host this was the beginning of the book she was reading. Guest yes, very beginning after the introduction. Host and theres a little humor. Why did willa cather hyphenate everything . Hyphenate the words . She hyphenated all the words . Guest which words . Host in my version she hyphenated every word. Married like maried. Guest that must be your version. Host oh good. Well leave that alone. Do you have a favorite passage . Begin theres a an austrian cowboy who is increasingly my favorite. Its interesting tv an austrian cowboy. Theres also a character in one of her other novels, a cowboy. I love the idea that this is the sort of second instantia tirvetion on of that character. Hes marvelous. I have a passage about him. He was mentioned in that opening passage. Hes with jim burden work jake, and they buy jesse james dime novels. Theyre getting into the westernster y type. As we sat at the table, this is at the home of his grandparents, the farm, when they get there. Ke kept stealing covert glances at each other. Grandmother told me while she was getting supper he was an austrian who came to this country as a young boy and led an advench rouse life in the far west among mining camps and cow outfits. His iron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain pneumonia and he drifted back to live in milder country for a wild he had relatives in a settlement north of us but for a year now he had been working with grandpa. Immediately after supper, he took me back in the kitchen to whisper that there was a horse bought for me. He told me everything i wanted to know how much he lost his ear when he was a stable drive for the a blizzard how much to throw a las zoe. He promised to rope a steer for me before sundown the next day he got out his chaps and silver spurs to show to jake and me and his best cowboy boot, stop stitch top stitched in bold desierntion roses and lovers knots and undraped female figures. These he said were angels. I know last week about huk finn that it was in the bys vis. This is not in the boys voice. Jim burden is a middleaged man in new york. You get moments of him recreating that childhood perception. The childhood eyes. And the undraped female figures who were angels, right. You have that sense of him as about a 10yearold boy with his cowboy, meeting his first real cowboy. Hes recreating his experience of child hoovmed host was there a go west young man sense to this book . Guest its a little later than the Horace Greeley go west young man moments. You have the railroad. You dont have the conestoga weapon, you have the immigrant car or the day coach like he and jake are in. The day coach. So its a little bit of a later moment. It isnt really the early homesteading moment so the grandparents are based on cathers own grandparents to an extent. They were homesteaders under the homestead act but that was 10 years earlier. At this point it was mostly land transactions. People proved up their claims and took possession of them or you were buying railroad land, the railroads were given a lot of land to sell. This is a sort of different moment from that. Host good evening and thanks for joining us here on books that shaped america. This is our seventh show. Tonight were look at my antonia by willa cather. These books on books that shaped america are not necessarily best sellers. They are not the best books in america. They are books that have had an impact on society at the time that they were written and today. And we chose this list from our partner, the library of congress larger list of 100 books that shaped america. So were pleased that youre joining us for the willa cather show. Wed love to hear from you 202 is the area code. 7488920 in the eastern time zone. 2027482921 in the mountain and pacific time zone. For Text Messages only, 202748003. A reminder to include your first name and city if you do send a text. Our guest tonight is with the university of nebraskalincoln. Her name is melissa holmsted shoosmest shes an english professor, director of the cather project, coed tore of the complete letters of willa cather, and author of the only wonderful things the partnership of willa cather and edith lewis, which well talk about in maine. We talked about immigration. We want to give you a sense of what the country was like in the 18 80s, where this book is set, even though it was written in 1918. The great wave of immigration was ongoing, abo 12 Million Immigrants arrived in the u. Between 1870 and 1900. For the pop so the population is approaching 70 million at this point. The largest number of those immigrants came from northern europe. The new immigrants were coming from southern and Eastern Europe as well. Including bohemia which well talk about. Were those southern and Eastern European immigrants welcomed as much as the Northern European immigrants . Guest no, they werent. There was a very vigorous discussion amongst anglo americans about what the true american character should be. Northern europeans were considered good because they were mostly christian. Southern and Eastern Europe were considered offwhite and they were largely catholic and jewish. They were considered to be not truly qualified to be american citizens by many people debating laws and setting policy. Host and the bohemians who arrived in Willa Cathers nebraska . Guest they were you get a sense in the book, when for example, when jim has killed a snake and antonia is praising his bravery and he said, why go rather than bohemian was an ethniclur, diminishing her for failing to speak english and failing to communicate with him. Host were there laws to prevent or restrict immigration at the time . Guest i think in 1917 there were the first restrictions, though they werent quite quo t. In 1921 theres an emergency quota act. In 1924, the policy for immigration quaw toes come