For my banned book essay, I chose to write about My Antonia by Willa Cather. This book is very popular and it is a favorite title of many people. However; some people, obviously, did not appreciate the work of Willa Cather for this novel and had it nominated to the banned book list. Some people addressed this novel to the banned list because of the author herself; her religious beliefs, her sexual orientation, etc. but I chose to believe that this book is in the banned book list because of the conflicts between the characters and their situations in the story. I was curious to know why this book was in the banned list, so I did some research. After reading My Antonia, I wasn’t sure why it was on the banned list; I thought it was a great novel. …show more content…
I wondered why they would submit a book to the banned list for this reason, so I researched. I found a website that contained pieces from a book called “Willa Cather in Person.” This website accommodated actual pages from that book. Reading through this article, I was able to learn a lot about Willa Cather and why she wrote My Antonia. I’m really enjoyed an interview published in the book that took place in 1925 between Willa Cather and the author. Willa Cather knew her book was frowned upon by some people. Concerning schools and courses of short-story writing, Miss Cather had this to say: "They can only teach those patterns which have proved successful. If one is going to do new business the patterns cannot help, though one does not deliberately go out to do that. My Antonia, for instance, is just the other side of the rug, the pattern that is supposed not to count in a story. In it there is no love affair, no courtship, no marriage, no broken heart, no struggle for success. I knew I'd ruin my material if I put it in the usual fictional pattern. I just used it the way I thought absolutely true” (Willa Cather in