# Talk:Willa Cather

Betty Jean Steinshouer has a new book, Long Road from Red Cloud: Life Lessons from Willa Cather. I haven't read the book itself, but she wrote in a blog about the book that its point is to argue that Cather was born intersex. This is the only reference I have been able to find for such a proposition. This biography is not a WP:BLP, but since I don't think that Steinshouer is a Cather scholar (IMO, the book and its marketing seems to just be for clicks), and since this appears to be the only reference to support that idea, it should not be added here. While being intersex is not a bad thing, we should be cautious about ascribing identity to people when it's not well-supported (so, entirely unlike Cather's lesbianism, or the conjecture about her trans status). Urve (talk) 17:19, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Please don't post negative information about a book you haven't read. If you do at some point get around to reading this book, you'll find that it is based on more than 40 years of Cather research. The reason "such a proposition" as Willa Cather's gender identity being tampered with at birth has not been written about until now should be easily understood, especially with all the insanity about gender in the current political maelstrom. After all, it took decades after her death in 1947 for Cather's lesbian identity to be written about and accepted. Discussion about her intersex condition may be soon beginning, with this ground-breaking book, awarded BookFest's 2020 International Book Award for Biography.
Steinshouer is indeed a seasoned Cather scholar and would probably have waited longer to reveal her conclusions, but for a Stage IV cancer diagnosis in 2018, lending an urgency to finishing and publishing Long Road from Red Cloud within a 2-5 year prognosis. Although she doesn't have a Ph.D., she is well established as an NEH "grass-roots scholar," presenting Humanities programs in 44 states on Cather and other authors since 1989. She was named a Fellow in Florida Studies at the University of South Florida in 2004, has long served on the Florida Humanities speakers bureau as well as toured with Humanities Nebraska's Chautauqua in 2012-2015, portraying Willa Cather. FLTalks (talk) 16:04, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Please explain your comment "the infobox is not even wrong but is inherently misleading and, by its nature, intractably so". This is one of the most bizarre edit summaries I can recall. First of all, you should not have reverted me per BRD. The article has long had an infobox, and I objected to your removal. The next step is to start a discussion.
Second, what in the world is misleading about an infobox that states basic facts about a person. That is the purpose of an infobox. How is occupation, birth/death, etc. info misleading?
MB 15:27, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

To answer your question about what is misleading about "basic facts" about a person is that these are, oddly, not facts (or at least, not always regarded as such!). The misleading information is: her date of birth is stated as fact when there is significant debate about it, she was not born in Gore, the "occupation" field is misleading (she was a novelist, hence "not even wrong", but it's misleading because that's not all she was notable for, much less all she was - she was a journalist, a ghostwriter, a biographer, a short story writer, a philanthropist, an agent, and more), and it is impossible to list it all without violating WP:UNDUE because (1) either none of these are included besides novelist, which is undue, or (2) it includes them all and makes them of equal significance, which is also undue. A pickle indeed.
But also, the discussions surrounding Stanley Kubrick's infobox—and specifically, the UNDUE discussions—are helpful and apply here. The infobox places undue weight on trivial biographical information, such as date of death and birth name, over the actual biographical material. Among other things, she is important for being a frequently-mentioned lesbian in early 20th century America, navigating her own persecution, finding and fostering community with writers like Sarah Orne Jewett, and dedicating O Pioneers! to her. An important element of her biography is that she forbade publication of her letters, possibly because they would out her. But infoboxes are intractably misleading (we can't add these to any parameters after all), so I think it's not appropriate.
Because they are not required, I don't think we should introduce it. Urve (talk) 15:56, 22 February 2021 (UTC) Edited; no need for lots of this. Urve (talk) 19:52, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Leaving this as a note for myself, and anyone else who comes across it. Stout's Cather Among the Moderns (2019) has a chapter dedicated to One of Ours and is described in a review as "among the most even-handed assessments of that novel, and her portrayal of Cather’s friendship/tension with Dorothy Canfield in this and other chapters is illuminating". Strong praise for an already well-established scholar. I plan to work through the book and add some more info (only cited in some explanatory footnotes right now), but any help is appreciated. Urve (talk) 20:17, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

I need to repair many of the cites. Shortened footnotes seem appropriate for an article of this length and allow for easier verification; also aesthetically pleasing but that's secondary. I am working in my sandbox; raise objections here otherwise I'll proceed per WP:CITEVAR. Urve (talk) 07:50, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

she died in 1972  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:8001:3700:6000:ADC0:3BE1:E99E:469B (talk) 02:06, 22 December 2022 (UTC) 

I've recently listened to 'The Affair at Grover Station', a BBC radio dramatisation of 'A classic American ghost tale by Jonathan Holloway, based on Willa Cather's short story'. I was shocked by its racism: the 'baddie' is bad because his mother was Chinese, and no-one contests this. The BBC did offer a 'health warning' before the broadcast. Among the references to this article there's one that hints at racism, but nothing in the article itself. Could someone who knows more about Cather than I do (she's not much more than a name to me) address this? Snugglepuss (talk) 20:08, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm replying, or adding, to myself. I did read the short story itself after hearing the broadcast. https://cather.unl.edu/writings/shortfiction/ss040_1 and https://cather.unl.edu/writings/shortfiction/ss040_2. Snugglepuss (talk) 20:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

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Statue of Willa carther (US capitol).webp
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