Spiritual Interrogations: Culture, Gender, and Community in Early African American Women's Writing Book

Harold Bloom, who died two months ago, edited and provided the introduction for this helpful volume of literary criticism on the works of Willa Cather and, specifically, the novel My Antonia. Recently I met a lively 96-year-old visitor from Nebraska at the Milwaukee Public Museum who had read all the works of Cather. We visited together about the lovely, detailed descriptions of the praire and the immigrants and agreed that just as Nebraskans reverently read their heroine, so should we all. However, Bloom's edited work takes the reader in deeper and in some of the chapters involves a Freudian analysis of Cather and her characters that is so profound that one easily forgets the lovely descriptions and the nostalgic reminiscence about Bohemians and other ethnic groups. Not that the Bloom tome should be ignored. It is a helpful analysis of great literature and its authors, but my reflections on Cather will forever be complicated by this reading. If you want more from Cather than a nostalgic, powerful and lovely reminder of America's pioneer era, you should read this book.