Final Reflection Assignment for Mennonite Literature, Fall 2013


Mennonites, a denomination of Christians who have their roots in the Radical Reformation, try to live by the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Their literal interpretation of the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" has led them to eschew military service as against the teachings of Jesus. This belief, along their insistence on baptism as the voluntary choice of adults who decide to be disciples of Jesus, has often led them into conflict with state churches, and prompted many migrations in their history, most notably from Switzerland, Germany, and the Alsace to American in the 18th and 19th centuries; and from Holland to Poland to Russia in the 19th century, and from Russian to the US, Canada, Brazil, Paraguay, and Mexico in the 20th century.

Because of this history of persecution and migration, Mennonites have long understood themselves " the this world, but not of this world, as Paul instructs in Romans 12: 2:

"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

This separation, or partial separation from the world, has led to communities that are sometimes closed  to outsiders to varying degrees. Because Mennonites understand that the Christian life is one of discipleship, lived in community with other believers, their church communities have taken on distinct characters, and church divisions have been common when the group cannot agree on a practice or interpretation of a theological principle. Not until the latter part of the 20th century did the desire for unity and group solidarity take priority over these frequent divisions.

Since the 1960s both American and Canadian Mennonites have grown more open to non-Mennonites, and a strong commitment to missions in the 20th and 21st centuries has created a significant population of Mennonites across the globe.  Mennonite higher education, with its increasing openness to students of other faiths, has played a major role in the production of a class of Mennonite professionals and educated church leaders, as well as leaders in the mission field. Due to the efforts of such organizations as the Mennonite Central Committee and Mennonite Mission Network, more than half of Mennonites Worldwide live outside of North America.  Civilian Public Service in the 1940s, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and the Peace Movement of the 1970s, brought American Mennonites into contact with other groups that shared their social and global peacemaking vision.

In his book, Mennonites in the Global Village, Sociologist Leo Driedger states that before 1940, 90% of Mennonites lived on farms. By 1990, only 10% of Mennonites were farming, and 25% of Mennonites were professionals. Because of this dramatic and relatively recent shift to modernity, Mennonites have been in constant negotiation to articulate their identity as a Christian, and/or religious and ethnic minority, in relationship to the larger cultures of which they have been a part.

As citizens of a postmodern world, most of us negotiate multiple communities and identities at once. Rather than live in an "either/or" world of compartmentalization, Mennonite writers seek to bring a complicated modern consciousness to bear on their writing.  Mennonite literature is situated at the border of multiple worlds and modes of discourse, finding a home in the "contact zone." In this way it speaks to multiple audiences from a specific cultural lens, and well as from a personal vantage point.
Writing works of poetry and fiction for a mainstream audience is expresses a desire on the part of an author to be "in the world," or at least in conversation with it. Writing works of poetry and fiction that reflect the effects of identity formation as part of an ethnic or religious group, is a way to contemplate what it means to be "in the world, but not of it" as a Mennonite.

In your final reflection, consider Mennonite literature as a recent phenomenon of this negotiation of personal identity or "self" in relation to group identity and the impact of modernization. Use a variety of works we've read this semester to support your own definition of what Mennonite literature is about and what it has to offer readers, both Mennonite and "others."  What does Mennonite literature "do" in the world that is different from history, theology, or missions? 

For evaluation purposes, please mention writers and works (minimum five) of Mennonite Literature from both the US and Canada, consider the variety of the types of Mennonites who are writing and who are represented in the literature (or if they are even represented at all), and refer to one or more works of criticism:

Hostetler, Ann. “The Unofficial Voice:  The Poetics of Cultural Identity and Contemporary U. S. Mennonite Poetry.”  Mennonite Quarterly Review (October 1998)  72.4, 511-528.

Tiessen, Hildi Froese, "Beyond the Binary: Re-Inscribing Cultural Identity in the Literature of Mennonites."  Mennonite Quarterly Review, (October 1998)  72.4

Gundy, Jeff. "In Praise of Lurkers Who Come Out to Speak.""Beyond the Binary: Re-Inscribing Cultural Identity in the Literature of Mennonites."  Mennonite Quarterly Review, (October 1998)  72.4

The Diary of Anna Baerg as a source for Sandra Birdsell's Katya, or The Russlander

In Sandra Birdsell's The Russlander, Katya, the main character, buys a journal as a young teenager and faithfully records recipes, women's wisdom, and the events of the Russian revolution as they unfold, tragically, for the Mennonites. (The novel was published in the United States as Katya.) The narrative device for the novel has the aged Katya telling her story to a young historian. It turns out that Katya has preserved her journal and the family letters, so she is the keeper of others' stories as well.

In the 1980s, a number of diaries kept by Mennonite writers during the Russian Revolution and Mennonite immigration to Canada were published, as Mennonite historians became more interested in social history. According to Joe Springer of the Mennonite Historical Library at Goshen College, the most popular of these is the Diary of Anna Baerg, 1916-1924, translated and edited by Gerald Peters (1985, CMBC Publications). Anna Baerg's age and situation resemble Katya's: Anna's father was the foreman of David Dick's large estate, whose beautiful grounds provided a childhood paradise. The Dick children were Anna's childhood playmates; it was only as they grew older that she began to feel the disparity between their social situations, according to Gerald Peters. Because she suffered from the after-effects of a childhood illness, Anna was spared hard physical labor. Her role on the sidelines allowed her to hone her observation and writing skills.

Was Birdsell aware of Anna Baerg's diary?  I'm quite sure she was. She doesn't borrow Anna's story entirely, but she does drop a hint in The Russlander (Katya) that she's read and learned from Anna's diary. Reflecting on her youth, the aged Katya remembers when she "was acutely aware of nature unfolding around her, its daily drama played out in the changing sky" and mentions the overly-ornate writing of her youthful journal entries, such as "His Majesty King Winter is upon us and has covered the world outside my little attic window in a cloak of ermine" (354).

In her entry for November 26, 1917, Anna Baerg wrote: "His majesty, King Winter, has ended nine balmy months of freedom and mobilized his troops. On the 24th of November, nine o'clock in the morning, at the supreme command of General Frost, the 'white army' crossed the borderline between heaven and earth, taking possession of the country side" (7).

There's no reason Birdsell would have needed to borrow the phrase "His majesty, King Winter" unless she wanted to drop an intertextual hint that her Katya had learned from Anna Baerg.  Certainly reading Anna Baerg's diary reinforces the historical context of Katya's story. The pictures of the Dick estate offer a sense of the grandeur and wealth of the Mennonite land holdings in the turn-of-the century Ukraine and the trajectory of Anna Baerg's narrative follows a similar pattern of nostalgia, fear, faith, privation, and migration.

The owner of the estate next to the Dicks' belonged to a Suderman, the name of the estate holder in The Russlander (Katya) who was killed during the revolution. David Dick and his wife and several family members were murdered on their estate, as was his Suderman neighbor. And one of David Dick's daughters is named Lydia, the name of Katya's closest Suderman playmate.  Anna's family, however, was not killed when the Dicks were murdered, although her sister Nela was on the estate at the time. Rather, her father had died several years earlier of typhoid fever.

Scattered throughout the journal are other details that suggest Anna Baerg's diary as a rich source for The Russlander.

In her entry for January 21, 1921, Baerg describes a woman that sounds very much like the crazed Vera at the end of Birdsell's novel. "An insane woman has been seen running around behind our garden and in the churchyard. Some say she is possessed. I am told she attacked someone--even the children are telling stories about 'the witch' at school.  Poor, deplorable woman. What may have driven her to this? How much more insanity will these times produce?" (74).  Clearly, Baerg's questions are stimulating ones for a novelist.

In her entry for September 25, 1923, Baerg records the story of a Mrs. Enns who dies of food poisoning after her finger was caught in a meat grinder (116). This echoes the tragedy of Willie Krahn's wife in Birdsell's novel, who dies of food poisoning after a contaminated meat grinder  falls on her foot and breaks open her toe.

Anna Baerg's diary is a lively and vital document written by an observant and intelligent observer and witness. Sprinkled with poems, it also offers a sense of humor that cuts across the distance of time.  Of her new home in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, Anna writes:

 "Oh, the earth is just as black here as there, the sky just as blue, and people all have noses in the middle of their faces wherever you go--in other words, one can live here, even live well. But it's not home. The English language sounds so harsh and foreign. I don't think I will ever learn to like it. Still, it's time for bed. And who knows what tomorrow will bring" (154).

What a deadpan last line from a woman who has just survived a revolution.

What Does a Mennonite Writer Owe to the Mennonites?

What are the obligations of the ethnic writer, in terms of representing her community to a literary audience?

 This image of Miriam Toews is from the 2012 guide to the International Writers' Festival

Miriam Toews addresses this and other questions in her Nov. 16, 2012 address to the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Toronto:  "Is there Such a Thing as a National Literature?"

Within this essay, Toews uses the Mennonite question to obliquely address the national one.  When she was in Italy at a writers' conference, she says, the Italians were much more interested in her Mennonite identity than her Canadian one, especially since she was there to promote her new novel, Irma Voth, set in a conservative Mennonite community in Mexico.

In a recent interview with a Manitoba publication she was asked why she portrays negative stereotypes of Mennonites  in her novels. (Three of Toews' six novels focus on Mennonite characters and settings.)

She replies: "I have never set out to expose flaws in the Mennonite community.

"However, it would be bad faith to say I can't understand why certain Mennonites would object to my books. We don't want people to think we're unsophisticated inbreds who condemn gays and lesbians to hell. It's a natural, defensive gesture to say, 'Wait, we're not all like that!' But such protests conveniently remove the onus of confronting difficult truths and lobbying for change."

Toews doesn't reject the idea of a Mennonite literature, or a Canadian literature, for that matter, and is "honored," she says, to be designated as both. What she does reject, however, is the idea that because she is a Mennonite or a Canadian, she should fit into some generalized categories determined by someone else, particularly conservative male politicians or Mennonite patriarchs.

Her conclusion:

"The imagination is inherently subversive and cannot be mandated. A writer can only serve her nation by serving her story."

One can infer, then, that this is also her attitude, as a Mennonite writer, toward the Mennonite community: that, in fact, the artist can only serve her ethnic community, by serving her story.

Mennonite identity is strong, enough, she suggests, to withstand--or even respond to--critiques by its writers who, by the way, are not experts or spokespersons for Mennonite culture, but rather, have lived in it. 

What do you think?

Here is an earlier blog post on A Complicated Kindness from the course I taught in Spring 2011.

Something Else, Something Unspoken - a Blackout poem based on an essay by Di Brandt

Something Else, Something Unspoken

in the vibrations of the rich black prairie soil, a wildness,
freedom, faint trace of thundering herds of buffalo,
the smell of woodsmoke in the air, the incessant beating of drums.
Hidden in my blood, my bones, an older memory
out on the green hills under the moon, in the Flemish lowlands
before the persecutions, the Inquisition, the Burning Times,
before we became transients, exiles --I remember
when we gathered, my women ancestors, around fires,
free-spirited, surrounded by trees. I remember
when worship meant laughter and dancing and lovemaking
under the moon, carelessly, instead of remembering
the torture of innocents, and fearing the night, and obeying
our husbands, and sitting in church.


This is a "blackout poem," a technique in which one blacks out all but a few chosen words or phrases in a text, maintaining the order of the original, but omitting words and phrases. All words are from Di Brandt's essay, "This land that I love, this wide, wide prairie," published in her book of essays, So this is the world and here I am in it (NeWest Press, 2007).

Brandt speaks to the contrast between a way of life that relies on the goodness of the earth, and a way of life based on perpetuating the memories of suffering, fear, and terror of one's ancestors.

Responding to Mennonite Identity Poems

In class we read "Mennonites" by Julia Kasdorf, "How to Write the New Mennonite Poem," by Jeff Gundy, and "A New Mennonite Replies to Julia Kasdorf" by David Wright. All three poems are collected in A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry. Students could respond to the poems with their own poem about identity inspired by these poems.  Here's my attempt:


Explanations

“Methodist,” I used to say
when the neighborhood kids asked me,

because the word began with “M.”
Once I answered “Mormon,” and gained

a friend. She invited me over and when
her parents asked,  I had to confess.

"Mennonites are a lot like Mormons,” I said,
not knowing how exactly, though I felt at home

eating meatballs with her parents and brother,
lingering at the table to talk. At recess, I chose

the German side, because my relatives spoke
Pennsylvania Dutch. But when I went home

my parents quickly explained we weren't
that kind of German. I read about Edith Cavell

who faced a firing squad for helping soldiers
on both sides. "We must love our enemies," Jesus said.

I pretended my blue-gray dress was my
prison drab. Brave like Edith, I'd say

“I’m Mennonite,”
and they would pardon me.

--Ann Hostetler, 9/17/2013

The Illumination of Martha - Sylvia Bubalo's Art as Midrash

Having just written a catalog about an exhibit of Sylvia Bubalo's work at the Good Library of Goshen College, "Imagining Community," I am out of words to describe the fascinating and deeply felt work of this unique artist, poet, and visionary. Instead, I would like to refer readers to one of my favorite response to her painting by Dawn Ruth Nelson, a pastor and spiritual director from Harleysville, Pennsylvania. The response was published in a special issue of the Journal of the Center for Mennonite Writing, September 19, 2010, on Sylvia's art and poetry, which I edited. Raised a few generations later in the same Franconia Mennonite Conference as Sylvia, Dawn discovered Sylvia's work as an adult and asked "Who was this artist, where was this woman all my life? This Mennonite female Chagall I never knew existed till she died? Was she too dangerous?"

Why dangerous? Perhaps because she challenges the status quo and puts women's spiritual experience at the center of her work, although she also includes many male figures as well. But Sylvia was reacting to a time in Mennonite congregational life when women were deprived of roles in church leadership. She not only portrays women as central to community and worship, but dares to interpret bible stories in a bold light.  As I wrote in my introduction to the Journal issue, "Sylvia’s vibrant engagement with Bible stories, reminiscent of the Jewish practice of Midrash or wrestling with the text, reveals a living faith that demanded her full resources as an artist. On the other hand, she was an outspoken critic of what she considered to be ossified practices and traditions among the Mennonites of her Pennsylvania community, especially those pertaining to women."

Dawn's reflection on the Mary and Martha story, a bible story key to a deeper understanding of the contemplative life, illuminates the paintings in a vivid way. She also looks closely and intelligently at the paintings. I didn't notice that every work of the story in scripture was painted into the background of "Martha," until I read Dawn's essay. Writes Dawn:

"The picture is called “Martha”, and that title would work just as well for the whole Mennonite community. We specialize in service. This story speaks to us because it does uphold the importance of service – Jesus enjoyed Martha’s hospitality or he wouldn’t have come back to her house so often for refreshment. But the story is really about the importance of something else: the importance of paying attention, of stillness, of listening, of simply “being with”. The story explains much of my own journey toward more focused prayer and worship. There is more than service in the Kingdom of God – there is a Person at the center who asks for our attention - a Person we can sit with, be with, who sets us free when we do that. And not just people in general but women in particular - in this story - free to pay attention to the one thing necessary."

Dawn is herself the author of a book on Mennonite spirituality, based on her interviews with her Mennonite grandmother, A Mennonite Woman: Exploring Spiritual Life and Identity.

Women have played a major role in shaping Mennonite literature, perhaps because more traditional routes were less available to them. Just as "Martha" sits rapt and attentive as "Mary" before the unlocked door in this painting, so can we begin to undo some gender bias in the representation of Mennonite theology and spirituality through studying the art and poetry of Sylvia Bubalo.

Mennonite Literature as Ethnic Lit

Today we had our first discussion in Mennonite Lit -- about Nathan Englander's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank," which first appeared in The New Yorker in December 2011, and which was later published in 2012 as the title story of a collection.  Englander's story portrays and encounter between two couples that represent the liberal and conservative extremes of the group. Brought together by the wives' school-girl friendship, the husbands struggle to connect. Eased by liquor, and then some pot discovered in a teenaged son's clothes hamper, the couples began to peel back the layers of decorum, revealing their assumptions about space, place, occupation, family, the holocaust, marriage, intermarriage, Jewish identity, trust, intimacy, finally testing out the latter three items by playing the Anne Frank game in a well-stocked pantry, challenging each other to discern whether or not they would save each other--given another holocaust, and one of them being non-Jewish.

What makes an ethnic group and how is it reflected in literature?  Ingredients include a shared history, shared religious beliefs or specific cultural practices, a language, and a resistance to, or anxiety about, assimilation into the mainstream culture. All of these elements are also present in Mennonite literature. There's even a version of a joke in Englander's story that I first heard in reference to Mennonites: "Why don't Mennonites have sex standing up? Because it could lead to dancing."

Englander's story is a take-off on a famous story by Raymond Carver, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." Carver's story also involves two couples getting soused, but it is not an ethnic story, unless we count rather well-off white alcoholics as an ethnic group. In 2007, The New Yorker published a version of Carver's story to show how the original was heavily edited by Gordon Lish.