Final Class Reflection: What is Mennonite Literature?

Introduction 
In order to define Mennonite literature, one has to ask the question: What Mennonite narratives exist, in reality and in our societal and cultural imaginations? This is, of course, a complicated question, in that we all come from different contexts, experiences and cultures. Before exploring what I have seen in the Mennonite literature we read this semester, I will offer what image I had of Mennonites before becoming immersed in Mennonite culture and religious tradition at Goshen College.

I did not know any Mennonites prior to coming to Goshen, and had associated them with the mainstream (and often inaccurate) images of the Amish. I did not have any background on the history of the Mennonite church, nor had I even heard of the name "Menno Simons" before my sister started attending Goshen four years ago. So, in that vain, I admit that I did not have a Mennonite narrative in mind. I have often found that when we have no knowledge about a specific group of people, we have hold a single narrative of the group. That wasn't the case for me. Although I associated Mennonites with the Amish, I still did not have a single image that came to mind when I thought about Mennonites and their narratives. Coming into this class, from prior experience in taking classes about post-colonial literature and feminist literary theory, and coming to intimately know many Mennonites, I knew I wouldn't be reading a series of books, short stories and poetry that all featured the same narrative.

To return to the question of Mennonite narratives, it is important to note that our individual bodies do not carry a single narrative, so neither do our communities, cultures and religious traditions. We cannot simply name what the Mennonite narrative is and expect that everyone who identifies as Mennonite, or those who grew up in Mennonite communities, will be able to identify with that narrative. There are many themes that emerge in Mennonite literature, such as pacifism, community versus individual, trauma (memory and lived) and language. However, it would be impossible to define and examine every theme, and know what themes are Mennonite and which are universal. As Ann Hostetler articulates in "The Unofficial Voice: The Poetics of Cultural Identity and Contemporary U.S. Mennonite Poetry," "I suggest that the 'unofficial voice' of the poet can portray complex internal differences within Mennonite culture that are not articulated in official constructions  of Mennonite identity" (Hostetler 511). So while I take on this question of "What is Mennonite literature?" I will simply examine the ways gender, language, and location inform the narratives in recent Mennonite literature. There are many differences I am omitting for the sake of brevity, such as race, sexuality, class, place of origin, and others. 

Gender

The male Mennonite narrative is often unnamed as being "male," in that it is thought of as simply the Mennonite narrative. But in looking at the differences between a female and male Mennonite narrative, we see that there is specificity in both narratives and that the female experience is not simply derived of the male experience with some added experiences (such as menstruation, childbirth and other markedly female sex experiences), but unique in its own way. In Peace Shall Destroy Many, Rudy Weibe details the experiences of Thom Weins in his struggle to reconcile his identity as an individual in a highly communal culture. While some form of this is also seen in the female experience, such as in Miriam Toews's A Complicated Kindness, Thom Weins's struggle is a markedly male experience. Weins essentially experiences a power struggle between himself and Deacon Block, where their theology and ideas of how to organize the community (specifically in terms of separation) conflict.

While women certainly experiences power struggles between each other, the conflict between Block and Weins is exemplary of their social position as men in a patriarchal society. Two women in this Canadian Mennonite context (in the 1930s) would be unable to voice their concerns about theology and community as loudly as Weins and Block are able to. Indeed, this directly contrasts with the silence experienced by the women in Sandra Birdsell's Katya at the hands of Abram Sudermann. Protagonist Katya experiences silence by trauma and silence by patriarchal power and force. Readers see a similar experience between the two different Mennonite communities, but understood from a feminine perspective, this narrative is about silence rather than conflict. So again, the reader sees that bodies and communities do not bear a single narrative.

In American Mennonite literature and art, Sylvia Bubalo echoes similar themes of silence in the female experience. In her paintings, we see themes of community versus individual, as well as the experience of resistance to rigidity and traditional values. In many images, there is a patriarchal male figure looming over a young girl. From a male perspective, this would likely look very different. We would see young men struggling to know their place in terms of leadership. In Bubalo's and Birdsell's work, we see young women grappling with finding their voice in a traditional, patriarchal, and religious community.

Language
Language plays a crucial role in Mennonite narratives. As a diasporic community, in addition to a society structured by class, language, both in the type of language spoken and how the language is spoken informs Mennonite literature. In Peace Shall Destroy Many, Katya, and A Complicated Kindness, the importance of Low German (or Plautdietsch) and High German is emphasized throughout the novels. In Peace Shall Destroy Many, readers see the community struggle with the implications of speaking German during World War II. One such instance is in chapter nine, "While leaving, the trustee seem oddly embarrassed, which she could hardly have suspected him capable of, when he mentioned they could not invite her to Sunday evening church service because it was held in German. He had added, careful, 'Of course, we do not side with Hitler, though we speak German. As I explained–killing is never right'" (Weibe 121). In this, we see that German is important to Mennonite narrative, but changes within context. This is yet again another reminder that there is not a single Mennonite narrative. 

In contrast, Katya and A Complicated Kindness explore the importance of German to the Mennonite community in markedly different ways. In Katya, High and Low German are used to mark class. Abram Sudermann and his family use High German, where Katya and her family often use Low German. The Russian peasants, then, use Russian, save for Sophie, who crosses class lines when she recites a poem in High German, "While some of the Russian workers could speak a word or two of Plautdietsch, Sophie had recited in High German, the Mennonites' formal church and school language" (Birdsell 32).  In A Complicated Kindness, we see Nomi struggle with the loss of a maternal body while at the same time losing her mother tongue, Plautdiestch. Her struggle is accompanied by a need for permanence in her words. Ironically, she chooses temporary routes of inscribing her name and word on the world through graffiti. 

Location
To frame my discussion of location in Peace Shall Destroy Many, Katya and The Body and the Book, I offer this quote:

This is clearly illustrated by the different ways in which Canadian and U.S. Mennonite poets have constructed their ethnicity in relation to a larger national identity. Canadian poets have received national recognition during the 1980s and 90s when Canadian government grants offered incentives for ethnic publishing...Since the Vietnam War era in the United States, however, Mennonites in general–let alone Mennonite poets–have received little recognition from the surrounding culture beyond their immediate spheres of influence. (Hostetler 516). 

Peace Shall Destroy Many and Katya are prime examples of the ways location informs the way Mennonite literature is received. In Canada, Katya was published under the name Russlander, a term for the Mennonite immigrants from Russia. This difference in naming is exemplary of the way Mennonites exist in the Canadian cultural imagination in a vastly different way than in the American cultural imagination. The term Russlander is known to many Canadians, where it isn't to Americans. Furthermore, both Katya and Peace Shall Destroy Many deal with a more recently lived trauma of persecution and forced migration than the work of American Mennonites, such as Julia Kasdorf's The Body and the Book. While these two novels deal directly with the trauma experienced by the Russian Mennonites (albeit in two different locations), while Kasdorf cites the memory of trauma, rather than the lived experienced of collective trauma in the body, "The meaning of the word memory for me is enriched when I see its tangled Indo-European roots run through the Latin memoir (mindful); the Greek martus (witness), which become martyr; as well as the Germanic and Old English murnam (to grieve). We write to bring things to mind, to witness, and eventually, to grieve" (Kasdorf 189).

In this, we see that Mennonite literature is informed by location and trauma, with differences in the writers' proximity to that collective trauma. 

Language, Sin and Abandonment in A Complicated Kindness

In chapter 18, when Nomi is speaking about Tash's sins and the conversation Tash and Trudie had right before Tash "had freed herself" (147), Nomi mentions a list of books the Tash reads: The Prophet, Siddhartha, and Tropic of Cancer. I want to explore some of the contents of those books and why those titles are significant to the larger themes of sin, language and abandonment in A Complicated Kindness.

The Prophet 
Originally published in 1923, The Prophet is a book of 26 prose poems written by Lebanese artist, philosopher and writer Kahlil Gibran. The book details Gibran's understanding of topics such as love, marriage, children, prayer, pleasure, self-knowledge, pain, beauty, religion, death and more. On a surface level, the book is not Christian or Mennonite and as such could be named a "sin." But on another level, the book is a written account of philosophy and religion in a community that values the oral over the written word. Furthermore, Tash's reading of these books is accompanied by her abandonment of her family. Something is "killing her" and she leaves as a result. Although there is not an explicit connection, the proximity of Nomi naming these books and Tash's leaving requires the reader to ask of what importance these books are to Tash. The Prophet names a sort of departure from Mennonite values and practices into a more spiritual world, not one tied down by rigidity and rules. 

Siddhartha 
Siddhartha was published in 1921 and written by Herman Hesse. The book was originally written in German and details the spiritual journey of a man named Siddhartha during the time of Gautama Buddha. Much like The Prophet, on a surface level, Siddhartha features religious thought and practice that is not Christian or Mennonite. It also details a journey, which is significant for Tash and her departure. The language of this novel is also significant because the original text was written in German. Throughout the text, we see Nomi struggle with naming and understanding her "mother tongue," Plautdietsch. Here, we have Tash reading a book originally written in German (though we do not know if she is reading it in English or German) right before she abandons Nomi. In this sense, Nomi is almost betrayed by her own tongue, which she attempts to reconcile throughout the novel. 

Tropic of Cancer 
Tropic of Cancer was written by Henry Miller in 1934. The book faced obscenity trials in the United States for its pornographic content. This book is clearly heretical to this group of conservative Mennonites, but also represents an important aspect of Tash's abandonment. Because Tash leaves with Ian, it is clear that she will "free" herself, sexually and otherwise. 

Silence in Katya

In the final chapters of Katya, there was one particular quote that struck me upon reading it. The quote is both a testament to Sandra Birdsell's writing skill and her attention to detail, but also telling of Katya's character and the way Birdsell writes about trauma and the silence that arises from trauma.

"She had been punished with a never-ending silence; with a void every time she asked for a voice; turned to a room expecting to find her mother at the table, a brother going out a door. She was punished with memories that came unbidden, such as a time spent sponging and ironing her brothers' trousers when they'd come back from Ox Lake, the heat and damp cloth releasing the mushroom scent of Gerhard; Johann, a wet-animal smell; Peter, the earth after a lightning storm; Daniel. Daniel still too young for wandering, and attached to the immediate yard, and his mother's skirts. All of them having the smell of motion, arms and legs churning through a day, the heat of ideas and plans. She was told she'd been fortunate to have been spared images that would stay with her forever, but her imagination was hers forever, and it gave her pictures that snatched away her breath" (337). 

I thought this quote was particularly salient in terms of explicitly stating the way trauma is functioning in Katya's life. Each time I read this quote, I am reminded of the immense breathlessness Katya must feel every time she is reminded of the tragedy, the loss of her family. Birdsell's use of imagery in this passage is an effective way of communicating that breathlessness and silence. Instead of merely telling the reading that she is at a loss for words, we see Katya turn the corner and encounter a sort of void, she finds loss in both physical and metaphysical ways, spiritual and fleshy. This quote also resonated with me because it reminded me of the poem of a close friend. In the poem, she writes, "when the world ends violent it is a silent film--/if you're lucky/if you aren't lucky,/you will remember the sound of ocean static,/and then silence,/and then dark" (Mullins). In this, we see that trauma is not as loud and fast as we are often led to believe, but rather that trauma is surrounded by silence, slowness and an unnameable heaviness.

I also thought this quote helped me connect and piece together Katya's memories of Greta. Throughout the final section, we see in several places that Katya is reminded of Greta or somehow connects Greta to what she is experiencing now, even if it isn't entirely relevant. For example, when speaking about the refugees who came to Willy Krahn's house, the narrator states, "The people in the room where Great had once stayed were refugees from the ransacked village near to Arbusovka, and not an apparition" (281). Here, we see that Katya is still grappling with the fact that Greta is gone, but not willing to quite name it yet. We also see that she is still stunned by her absence, and by the presence of the refugees in the place where Greta "had once stayed." In the passage that follows that quote, we see Katya's body carry with it the sort of heaviness she can't quite name. The narrator says, "Her limbs became liquid, and too long for her body, and for a time she walked crookedly, bumped into door jambs and tripped on stairs. The sound of laughter in a street brought tears, as did sunlight touching a snow-covered roof, sparks of frost cartwheeling around her when she went walking" (281).

Birdsell allows the reader to experience trauma through the body, to examine closely how Katya carries this silence with her and how she eventually comes to name it and speak back to that silence.

Mullins, Piper. "Untitled (for sam)." A Caesura Just Uses Less Space. N.p.: n.p., 2012. N. pag. Print.

Paraguay Primeval

Carol Ann Weaver's means of storytelling and communicating narrative was not one I had experienced prior to her performance last Tuesday. Through her music, I learned a lot about the relationship between Mennonites and Paraguay. I thought the way she weaved prose and poetry with music was interesting and an effective means for creating a larger narrative for the audience to connect with. With that being said, I didn't particularly enjoy the music, but I think that is largely just a result of my taste in music and not Weaver's skill or composition.

However, I did enjoy the “Lengua Women” song and how Weaver juxtaposed the image of the Mennonite women with the indigenous women. I enjoyed the way she took parts of what was said in the Mennonite communities while providing some of the history of the Lengua women, particularly the mention of the matriarchy. I also enjoyed the tango piece and the fact that she put in “three” instead of “four” to represent the trinity. I do not know much about music, but I thought that was an effective choice. 

I also wondered throughout the performance whether or not Weaver would touch on the relationship the Mennonite immigrants had to the history of colonialism and imperialism of Europeans in South America. She briefly explained the relationship the Mennonites had with the indigenous people and other inhabitants, stating that they gave back to the community. I do not know much about the relationships Mennonites have with Paraguay other than what I learned from Weaver, but I wanted to know more about how this narrative fits into a larger narrative of colonialism. 

Joseph's Letter to Thom: Peace Shall Destroy Many

In chapter 12, Thom reads Joseph Dueck's letter to him aloud to Margaret. The letter explores many of the themes present throughout the novel, particularly skepticism and pacifism. Joseph tells Thom about an event in which "a whiskery man came in and began talking to the man on the first bunk" (Wiebe 161). The man eventually goes over to Joseph and asks, “‘Brother, are you saved?’” (Wiebe 161). Joseph then goes onto explore the important theme of differences between Mennonites and other Christians. Joseph states, “Our tradition is made more obvious by being in opposition to that of the majority. I am convinced that their position is contrary to Christ’s teaching, but am not sure that ours is very much better” (Wiebe 161). Joseph’s statement is a seminal one in Wiebe’s exploration of Mennonites and the way they encounter the world around them, specifically in the context of war. Throughout the novel, Wiebe explores what it means to be a Christian, and although this passage does not answer that question, it forces both the reader and Thom to consider  The novel as a piece of Mennonite literature asks Mennonite readers to explore their own assumptions and beliefs about what being a Mennonite Christian is. 

As passage I found that further explores this theme, and acts as a juxtaposition to Joseph’s letter is Pete Block’s discussion of who can be included in the church in chapter 14. The letter illustrates that Mennonites feel like outsiders in the world, or “in opposition to that of the majority,” but at the same time, Pete Block in insistent that there are certain groups of people that are not allowed in the church. He states:

It also says we are to remain separated from the world...You know that the Mackenzies and the Labrets just could not join our church. It’s impossible...Instead of them caring nothing, as they do now, your doing their all the time, maybe even helping them to believe they’re Christians, would only show up the difference between them and us so much more clearly. Only bitter feelings could come of it. And we’ve live peacefully beside them for many years. (Weibe 195). 

This passage is an interesting contrast to Joseph’s letter. While Joseph explains what peace means to their church and how other Christians view them, Block reveals his racism and desire for isolation. The language barriers and differences in lifestyle are references as excuses for this prejudice, which Thom protests. Through these discussion, Wiebe brings up important questions the Mennonite church is still grappling with: what does it mean to be “not of this world”? 

Queer erasure and representation in Gadfly

When I came out in The Record a little over a year ago, I knew it wouldn’t be the last time I came out. In fact, the choice to come out in such a public fashion was strategic, planned and carefully implemented because I know my body, I know my identity and I know the ways those two things intersect and are understood by other people. As a femme lesbian, my stories, histories and identities are invalidated, erased and ignored on a near daily basis. The stories of my community, of lesbian culture and queer culture in general and of women are relegated to the margins, are shunned and cast as Other. I cannot turn on the television, look at a magazine, go into any store or watch any commercial and expect to see images and stories that are representative of my experiences and my communities as a lesbian. If by chance I do see these images, they are often stereotyped, over dramatized or simplified or inaccurate. 

In that vain, when I hear or see a story that in some way involves queer characters, especially queer women, I am interested. If a TV show has a queer female character, I will watch it no matter how poorly-written she is. When I read Daniel Hess’s “Menno Pause Revisited,” on The Center for Mennonite Writing, I became interested in Jim Wenger’s story. Jim Wenger was one of four editors of Menno Pause, a controversial underground newspaper published at Goshen College in the late 1960s. The four editors were eventually expelled, for both the publication and other concerns. Hess explains, “When I was finished, the president reached for his desk drawer, pulled out a Berkeley Barb, opened to a page of personals, ran his finger to one particular item and had me read it—a solicitation for a male partner from our own Jim Wenger.” 

While I crave and want to see positive images and stories about the LGBTQ community, I don’t live in an idealized world where I can ignore when members of my community are faced with the burdens of homophobia and heterosexism (among other oppressions the LGBTQ community faces, such as misogyny and sexism, transphobia and cissexism, racism, ableism and others). I do not enjoy hearing stories of discrimination and oppression, but I know I need to hear them, because they are a part of the history of my community and my own history. I have experienced and continue to experience homophobia and misogyny and need to know that I am not alone in this struggle, that I am not the only body carrying these burdens. So while hearing Wenger’s story was painful and disturbing, it allowed me to place myself within a larger context at Goshen College. I know Goshen College has come far from the days of expelling queer students for being queer, but reading this story was validating and I better understand my experiences as a queer femme woman at this college as a result. 

With all that said, I was expecting to hear some of Wenger’s story in Gadfly, a play depicting Sam Steiner’s life. Steiner was also one of the four editors of Menno Pause. After Steiner and Wenger were expelled, they moved to Chicago and lived together in an apartment. While I enjoyed the play and thought it was well done, I found it problematic that Wenger’s story was completely erased from Gadfly. It seemed that Wenger had an effect on Steiner’s life and as result, I left the show feeling disappointed and reminded of the ways my community has been erased and continues to be erased from history. I took the time to remember the ways the histories of Ruth and Naomi, Jael, David and Jonathan, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Rahab of the Bible, as well as the narratives of historical figures such as Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Willa Cather, James Baldwin and Bessie Smith have been understood within a white, male, cisgender and heterosexual framework and the ways I have learned to remember those histories and narratives as queer.

While I do not take this experience for granted, nor wish that I did not experience it, I worry that other members of the audience did not have the same context I had coming into the play. I knew of Wenger’s story and was expecting at least some exploration of Goshen College’s history (and continued history) of homophobia and heterosexism. Even though Gadfly was not written by members of the Goshen College community, the producers and writers of this play are still implicated and responsible for accurately portraying this community and its history. The play cannot be removed from the context of a longstanding history of queer erasure and misrepresentation. While I appreciated the themes of active pacifism and social change, I wish my community and its history would have been included in this dialogue. 

Todd Davis' "In the Kingdom of the Ditch"

Todd Davis' title poem in his book, In the Kingdom of the Ditch, requires several readings. The poem is only three couplets, but asks the reader to value and understand each word because of its brevity. The poem reads as one sentence, which forces each word to be dependent on the one preceding it. The first stanza doesn't make much sense without the second stanza and the second stanza does not stand independently from the third stanza. This form allows Davis to effectively use juxtaposition to communicate his theme. While he focuses on natural images, he contrasts that with man-made objects, such as lace, saucer and thimble.

From what I understood of the poem, I thought Davis was emphasizing the relationship between opposing or contrasting identities, and understanding how those play out in the natural world. The image of the shrew and the rat snake "seek[ing] after the same God," seems to draw from that theme. At his reading on Tuesday, Davis mentioned that violence is a part of nature, and not something we should necessarily condemn or dismiss as a negative thing because it is part of the way nature reproduces itself and maintains itself. I can see that idea very clearly in this poem, in that we see a predator and prey, who are still violent in some manner, but are both living with and within the natural world. From a Mennonite perspective, I think Davis is trying to speak to modern understandings of pacifism and offering a different perspective than the typical "violence is bad, peace is good," dichotomy. He complicates pacifism by offering that the natural world is violent, but not necessarily in a traumatic or destructive way.