My students asked me the other day why we have different accents in the US. And I said that’s a complicated question but one of the answers is because different parts of the country were inhabited by immigrants from different parts of the world, for different reasons. They also didn’t believe me or conceive of the idea that even though cultures and ethnicities were quite old in Europe, a lot of countries were not. About a 75% chance I mention to them that the main […]
A rich, unexpected novel from Willa Cather
As you all know by now, I’ve been on a Willa Cather binge. If you’ve only read My Ántonia, keep going. She’s really a terrific writer and there’s more than just the Great Plains to be found in her writing. One of Ours is one such out-of-the-box example. Cather is interested in a global and national identity, as well as a local one. This novel plumbs the richness to be found in the individual. Claude Wheeler is a farmer’s son with restless ambitions about becoming […]
Who is “my mortal enemy”?
When I was at my local library, I just sort of swooped through the Cather books and picked them all up. I didn’t realize that in addition to her sweeping novels, Cather also wrote some very short tomes. My Mortal Enemy is one such book. It clocks in at just over 100 pages, and it is more a vignette than an actual plot, which makes it a challenge to blog about. My Mortal Enemy takes the viewpoint of Nellie Birdseye, a 15-year-old girl living out […]
A bridge to nowhere
Hey, look, I’m still reading Willa Cather! Are we surprised? I decided not to go in chronological order, so I’ve been jumping around her oeuvre. As a result, I’m reading her first novel among the last. It’s okay, though. Even though I don’t necessarily get a sense of Cather’s progression as a writer, I’m definitely enjoying the different facets of her writing style, particularly the early works. She’s earned a reputation as a Great Plains writer, but she’s definitely about more than just regionalism. She’s […]
A Cather novel about the Antebellum South.
I’m now working my way through Willa Cather’s less famous novels, and I have to say, I’m disappointed the ones I’ve been reading are less famous than they could be. The Song of the Lark, O Pioneers!, and Death Comes for the Archbishop are all very deservedly famous, but after reading Sapphira and the Slave Girl, I hope that more of her works can receive greater prominence. She’s an excellent writer and she takes her readers to a bunch of backgrounds throughout the course of North American […]
A world unknown, explored by Cather
Well, here I go again, it seems. I’m binging on another author, with no help in sight for binge-readers like me. Cather is a master storyteller, and this novel takes us away from the Great Plains into a world that none of us have experienced. It’s the power of reading—you get to experience other times and other worlds. Shadows on the Rock takes us to 1697 Quebec. There, political and religious conflicts take place against remote settlements and unforgiving winters. The novel follows a year […]