My Antonia details the immigrant lifestyle of the West, in the vast prairies of Nebraska. The immigrant experience in the West is burdensome, as the Shimerdas are consistently undermined by greedy Anglo-Saxons in search of effortless profit. Despite their lack of funds, the Shimerdas are deceived into “paying twenty dollars for [an] old cookstove that ain’t worth ten” (Cather 14). Nevertheless, the Shimerdas continue to toil away despite their many financial hardships. The Shimerdas transitioned from living in a clay home “no better than a badger hole” in their first winter, to equipping themselves with a log house in the following spring (Cather 14, Cather 47). This housing transition refutes the nativist view that immigrants “[take] no permanent