A Different Perspective

My senior seminar class is reading a book by Julia Kasdorf titled The Body and the Book.  While reading the essay for this week's class, I found it really correlated with Mennonite Literature too.  In Julia's essay, "Preacher's Striptease," she discusses Jeff Gundy's poem, "How to Write the New Mennonite Poem."  She calls the poem a "spoof" that "pokes fun at the overly self-conscious "new Mennonite" poet who has internalized society's desire for cultural stereotypes and who clutters his poems with signs of authenticity... at the same time, the writer projects the correct Mennonite attitude that is a combination of humility and respect for one's tradition."  I was surprised by Kasdorf's interpretation of Gundy's poem.  In class we had talked about Gundy's poem as a response to Kasdorf's poem "Mennonites."  Kasdorf seems to think, rather, that Gundy's poem is a spoof on "new Mennonite" poets like David Wright, although David's "A New Mennonite Replies to Julia Kasdorf" was written after Gundy's poem and only mentions these "stereotypes" when he is expressing how he does not fit them.  Later in the essay, Kasdorf discusses Wright's poem also, and assesses it as a response to Gundy's poem, "offering an alternative, authentic image of the "new Mennonite"- as opposed to Gundy's parodic "new Mennonite poem."
I thought it was very interesting to hear the author of one of the poems in this discussion give her opinion.  I remembered how our professor, Ann, said that Kasdorf and Gundy are good friends and I wonder what their conversations about each other's work is like, especially given that Gundy's poem is a response to Kasdorf's.

A Visit to the Mennonite Historical Library at Goshen College

After talking a little about geneology in our Mennonite Literature class I decided to look deeper into my ancestry.  A few years ago I had done some geneology work for a class at my community college so I knew my grandparents had some information on our history.  I remembered that on my dad's side my family had been Mennonites but what I found on my mother's side surprised me.  It turns I come from a very Mennonite background on both sides of my family. In leafing through an extensive booklet of Neuhauser (my maternal grandmother's maiden name) geneology written in 1975, I found among my relatives names such as Menno, Amos, Ezra, and Noah.  When looking at last names, I was surprised when I came across common Goshen College last names such as Yoder, Amstutz, and Miller.
I had some questions concerning the first two generations in the book because the author was not sure if they were correct. At the suggestion of Ann I took my questions to Joe Springer at the Mennonite Historical Library on the GC campus.  Joe was so helpful. He could answer all my questions.  Within minutes he had looked up my family online and could say "these are your relatives." I was so thrilled. And he was able to confirm this information through a copy of the shipping log from the ship my great great great grandfather came to the U.S. on from France. He also found his birth certificate from 1808 written in sprawling french and read it for me and gave me copies of all of this.  He showed me how to use ancestry.com to do more research on my own. I have always been interested in geneology and I am grateful to have this resource of the Mennonite Historical Library available to me.  I was able to go back five more generations from this great great great grandfather.  I plan to research other branches of my family further and see what interesting things I am able to discover and share with my family.

Response to Rhubarb Issue (winter 09, #24)

            While this issue of the Rhubarb magazine is centered on the single theme of American writing on traveling and homecoming, the genre of work it presents is very eclectic.  Most of the issue is comprised of poems and short works of nonfiction but it also includes book reviews, an artist’s statement, an interview, and a translated Arabic poem.  Each of these mediums of writing offer a different view of the journeys Mennonites take and how those journeys affect them.

            When I first opened this magazine issue I thought that all of the pieces would be about remarkable trips to far off countries and, while many of them were, the works that I enjoyed the most are the ones that deal with a different kind of travel.  Linda Wendling does not physically go anywhere in her story “Cosmonaut Girl Lost in Space.”  Her story is more about traveling inside her mind and going back to a time in the past when her mother was still alive.  She also remembers a trip she once took to Java to the top of a volcano.  Her stories twist and meld together the lost feeling after her mother’s death and being lost on a volcano in Java, and straighten out when she finds her way back home.

            Kirsten Beachy’s “Last Mile” is also steered more toward the wanderings of the mind than of the actual physical journey.  The canoe trip sparks her minds wanderings but it are the narrator’s thoughts that travel further, leaving behind friends and the here and now and traveling to a hypothetical “what if?” of a looming possible hidden romance.

            When Jean Janzen returns to her home town for a reunion in “Sleeping in the Cellar,” her memories are so strong and so quietly slipped in to the present that as you read you forget that the narrator is a fifty year old mother and not a ten year old girl.  She gives a different view of basements as she talks of being one with the earth she is within as she sleeps below the ground.  She is reminded of how she came to be in this place, of her father emigrating from Europe and how she returns to the place of her ancestors, completing the circle.

In Melanie Zuercher’s “High on a Mountain,” Zuercher’s spring break trip to the Appalachian Mountains inspires her to take a trip back home to a mountain she is more familiar with.  For Zuercher, mountaintops are places of refuge, of peace and memories.  She does not need to travel great distances, she just goes up.  

My favorite piece in this issue discusses an entirely different kind of travel.  In “The Road to Amish Country,” Rachel Yoder travels with her dad to a different county but most importantly, it is a journey to a different culture.  I was intrigued by this new view of Mennonites and the Amish.  Yoder’s presents us with a unique view of the gap between Mennonites and Amish people as only someone in her position has the power to do.  She also provides a good insight into the culture and ideas of her former Amish father as he struggles with his past and his present and how to make them work together.  Being a Methodist, Yoder’s story is a valuable insight for me into the relationship between the Amish and Mennonites.

I was also intrigued and surprised by the issue as a whole.  Even before I turned the first page I was struck by the cover of the magazine.  The cover two very polar images: what looks like an Amish buggy and the outline of a seemingly naked girl dancing.  The second image is so far from what I have learned about Mennonite beliefs and traditions and some of the pieces in the issue carried with them this same surprise as they contain swear words, talk of sex, and thoughts of affairs.  This was not at all what I was expecting in a Mennonite magazine.  Maybe this new look of Mennonite art and literature that is starting to appear is indicative of changes that the Mennonite faith is going through or at the very least it is indicative of the difference between liberal and conservative Mennonites.

Thoughts on Mennonite In A Little Black Dress

I can most definitely say that Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is not one of my favorite books.  In fact, I really did not like it at all.  When I started the book I was surprised by Janzen's humor; I thought I would get used to it but it just bothered me the entire time.  This semester I am in a class called Writing the Memoir so maybe I am looking at this in a different perspective than most people in the class.  I know I do not want to copy Rhoda Janzen. Her book is full of huge segues because she will leave one story to go off on another and by the time she goes back to the first story the reader has forgotten it or how the two connect.  As a writer, Janzen's book brings to mind how I want to go about writing my own memoir as far as talking about family and friends.  I felt bad for the people Janzen wrote about and hoped that she had asked their permission first before she said what she said about them.  I definitely will think twice about what I write about people.