When I
began this journey through Mennonite Literature at the start of the semester, I
wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I considered myself a Mennonite, but I wasn’t
sure if anyone else would. I found out early the difference between ethnic
Mennonites and religious Mennonites. As often as there are religious Mennonites
like myself, there are also those who are ethnic Mennonites but no longer
follow the religious aspect of the faith. I thought then, how can people who identify as a member of a faith not believe in the
faith part?
If I were
to teach this class, I think I would have taught books in chronological order.
I found out from Katya the Mennonite
history in Russia before coming over to Canada. Of course there is much more
history before Russia, to Prussia, eventually back to Menno Simons, and even
further back to Martin Luther and his 95 Theses. But what was more meaningful
than learning a blunt history of maneuvering from one country to the next in
search of land and exemption from armed forces, was watching someone live it. Katya let me live the Russian Revolution
through the eyes of a young girl. I saw how she was uprooted, and more
importantly I saw how it affected her. I felt how she felt when it claimed the
lives of her family members. I experienced the trauma of that era of the
Mennonites to understand it in a new way.
We read Peace Shall Destroy Many before that,
but it comes chronologically after the storyline of Katya. It shows the hardships of living in a Canadian Mennonite
settlement and the relationship with the Native Canadians on a very surface
level, but as the story develops, the book focuses on an element that Katya began to develop: internal church policies,
moralities, and the virtue of being Mennonite. While I would say Katya put a sub-focus on critiquing the
Mennonite church, PSDM puts a main focus on it. This is where I learned about
the inner qualms between Mennonites. Questioning the value of pacifism, the
value of separating the community from the rest of the world, and the value of
clinging on to the teachings of the past. These qualms set up perfectly the
next stage in Mennonite development in A
Complicated Kindness.
Coming full
circle, Nomi in A Complicated Kindness criticizes
heavily the Mennonite church and its founder Menno Simons. Miriam Toews writes
the book as heavily satirical, treats the issues that were developed in PSDM as
if they are common knowledge, and moves on to exaggerate those issues and
symbolize them all over the place through the life of a teenage girl growing up
in an almost modern Mennonite
society. At this point, I have a very clear idea of where the Mennonite
tradition came from and where it is ending up in our current day and age. Most
importantly, I can see at this point what makes the Mennonite tradition so
fascinating to write about and why Mennonite Literature is a type of ethnic
literature.
I know now
that to be a Mennonite means much more than believing in Jesus, Pacifism, and
not being part of the world. I understand how ethnic Mennonites can abandon the
faith and still be Mennonites. They share a common history of hardship. They
traveled together across the world to find refuge, and then they discovered
deeply concerning questions within the heart of the church doctrine that have
created great divides. And that’s where contemporary Mennonite Literature comes
in.
We read
snippets of Mennonite in a Little Black
Dress by Rhoda Janzen, various bits of poetry by Julia Kasdorf, Di Brandt,
Sylvia Bubalo, and many others, and I personally read The Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder, all of which step into the
Mennonite Literature field after the creation of the ethnic Mennonite, the
problems within that community divide its members, and critics of Mennonite
culture, both currently and formerly within the Mennonite tradition come into
the literary field.
So after a
full semester of engaging in Mennonite literature through the ages, I
understand how the big question of Mennonite literature right now has come to
be: What does the Mennonite writer owe to the narrative? In finishing the
semester, I read a critical essay by Paul Tiessen in various more modern
Mennonite novels such as A Complicated
Kindness by Toews, and Children of
the Day by Sandra Birdsell that dealt mainly with this question: how are
modern critiques and satirizations of the Mennonite community affecting the
nationwide or even global view of Mennonites as a whole. The result was that
Tiessen believes these new and “complicated” narratives don’t so much establish
the Mennonite narrative for our time
but open new spaces to talk about Mennonite culture in new ways and at new
angles, creating many diverse narratives.
Now after
reading all of the vast collection of Mennonite Literature from the different
eras of Mennonite history, I can say I disagree. I see a trend in which
satirized versions of Mennonite culture and comedic post-modern vantage points
of Mennonites are becoming more and more common, and books like Katya and perhaps Blush by Sherley Showalter that show Mennonites in a more positive
light are dwindling. I think Mennonite writers absolutely must keep this in
mind when contributing to the Mennonite narrative, which is whenever they write
anything at all, but that is not to say they must limit what they write. They
must simply keep in mind what outcome may arise from their contribution to the
narrative.
