Mennonite Lit--Bringing it all Together

            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.