The Mennonite who wore a little black dress

Here's a photo from Rhoda Janzen's professional modeling days . . .

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress -- The Writer's Dilemma

Clearly this Mennonite Writer had a non-Mennonite audience in mind. What I'll warrant she didn't expect, was the interested, passionate, and sometimes hotly critical response of a reading Mennonite public. Thus Janzen's Mennonite Writers' dilemma was less whether or not to tell the "secrets" of family and community, but rather what to do once she had told them in a memoir that nearly everyone wanted or wants to read.

While reviewers from non-Mennonite places noted the affection that Rhoda shows, especially for her mother, to whom the book is dedicated, Mennonites were concerned with which Mennonite story she was telling, whether she got the history right, how she talked about her family, and the embarrassment they were sure her rather unvarnished portraits were causing them. Some of these reviewers weren't above giving Rhoda a good scolding.

One of the more balanced reviews by a non-Mennonite acquainted with Mennonites is by Jessica Baldanzi in the CMW Journal. This book review, to date, received more comments than anything the Journal has published. These comments, which you can read when you access the review online by clicking on Jessica's name above, express a range of Mennonite responses. After we make our own assessments, we'll read some of both kinds of reviews in our class.

Another review from an "Old Mennonite" (aka early immigrant Mennonites to the US) perspective is by Shirley Showalter, former President of Goshen College, on her blog, "100 Memoirs." This review highlights some of the differences between Swiss-descended and Russian descended Mennonite groups.

Shirley also has a very useful guide to Rhoda's use of humor in Humor and Memoir: Seven Ways to Leave 'em Laughing, a guest comment on a blog about women's memoirs.

A balanced review from a non-Mennonite perspective is by Kate Christensen in the Nov. 5, 2009 Sunday New York Times Book Review.

The Mennonite Bestseller

Before Mennonite in a Little Black Dress hit the bestseller lists, it was almost inconceivable to me that any book about Mennonites could garner such a large audience in the United States. Canadian Mennonite Writers have been winning national awards for nearly forty years. Rudy Wiebe's The Temptations of Big Bear won the Governor General's Award in 1973, and Miriam Toews's A Complicated Kindness won the same award in 2004 and was the winning title for Canada Reads in 2006. But in the United States Mennonite Writers are a tiny drop in a huge multicultural salad of writers--and compared to the Amish, who attract huge interest, Mennonites are hard to identify or figure out.

Then along comes Rhoda Janzen with Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Her editor promised it would be big and she was right. What is the secret of this book's success?

As we began the book, I asked my students to look for "windows" and "mirrors" -- that is, windows that show them and unfamiliar world, and mirrors that reflect their own experience back to themselves.

In our first discussion, they mentioned the ridiculous family car trips, the embarrassingly uncool ways in which her mother uses vocabulary words such as "boner" without understanding their colloquial meaning, the bonding over food, the weird relatives, the frugality, the "lunches of shame." Rhoda makes us laugh and wince over a whole array of "uncool" things in life that she dares to name in a loving and frank, and sometimes snarky way. Rhoda is never far from the scrutiny she casts on the world around her, and she comes in for her share of jokes at her own expense, which makes her a good sport.

I've asked students to identify key topics that recurr in Janzen's memoir that offer both windows and mirrors to readers. At the top of my list are food, the body--especially in its humble, often less than attractive flesh, family, a history that ties the present to the past, and a strong desire to find the good in even the worst events, seasoned with a heavy dash of humor. Many of these topics tie directly into what Janzen shows she appreciates about her Mennonite family.

Pearl Diver -- The Writer's Dilemma Revisited

In my last post on Pearl Diver, I shared my initial emotional response to this film--a response that expressed my dilemma as a writer and creative artist. I've devoted much of my career in joining other writers to create a space for Mennonite writing to be appreciated by both insiders and outsiders, not only tolerated by the Mennonite community, but welcomed. This is not an easy task in a tradition which has a centuries-long distrust of the arts--except for singing in 4-part harmony, a group art that Mennonites have embraced with zeal in the past century.

Watching Hannah destroy her manuscript on screen was symbolic for me of the pressure Mennonite artists often feel to give up on their art, their vision, because, after all, it comes through the individual--and in Mennonite culture it seems to me, the individual is only valued as a member of the group. Then, upon rereading Sidney King's essay, "The Mennonite Screenwriter," I realized that, of course, Sidney, too, is a Mennonite Writer. The Mennonite's dilemma is his dilemma, too, and that's why he tells the story so pointedly and so well.

King's first film, Shroud for a Journey, a Mennonite story produced for today's Mennonite audiences garnered thousands of viewers from this specialized audience, but it did not get any recognition from a general audience. King's second effort, Pearl Diver, made while King was still in his twenties, was an attempt to bridge these audiences. King calls Pearl Diver "something of an effort to explore Mennonite myth-making and buried trauma, as well as a few other themes that collectively will very quickly doom a film to commercial failure." King was able to exercise artistic control over this independent film because he was both its writer and director.

Pearl Diver garnered an impressive array of awards at independent film festivals in Canada and the U.S: the Best Narrative Award at the Winnipeg International Film Festival; the Crystal Heart Award at the Heartland Film Festival; and the Grand Jury Prize at the Indianapolis International Film Festival. Clear evidence that King was able to reach multiple audiences--both a Mennonite audience with a personal stake in the stories, and a substantial audience outside the Mennonite community. He did this by creating a compelling story line, and showing viewers some of the simple rural beauty he values in his heritage--although there are a goodly portion of Mennonites these days who have no connection to the family farm.

King admits that having an audience for his work feels good. And he's Mennonite enough to feel ambivalent about this: "Am I completely missing the call to . . . humble service? When is the drive for validation and recognition constructive and when is it corrupting and corrosive? Is it good when it’s about creating something of redeeming value, but not so good when it’s about creating something frivolous or disposable? And ultimately who decides what’s frivolous and what’s redeeming? Are these even interesting questions? I don’t know. It’s not really something Mennonites like to talk about." In the current film industry, he points out, it's rather ludicrous for a screenwriter to be concerned about humility--as screenwriters are at the bottom of the movie-making industry and their work often ignored or tampered with unmercifully.

In Pearl Diver, Hannah decides to sacrifice her manuscript and the money and fame it would bring her when she realizes how it would compromise her sister's mental and emotional well-being. But what about when the stakes are less clear and more murky--as in real life? What is the price of the writer's silence. Could it be that in publishing or producing her work, the writer is also making a sacrifice--sacrificing her peace of mind for a story she feels called to tell, risking the criticism of the Mennonite audience for not "getting it right?"

Sidney King deserves our admiration and gratitude for following his calling to make a film that takes on the dilemma of the Mennonite writer--the torn loyalties to craft and to communal values the Mennonite writer feels when writing about the community from an individual artistic perspective. For King's imagination contains both Marian and Hannah--and in some ways their dilemma is his. Yet he also knows that if a writer casts a manuscript into a pond, even without a photocopy, the writer will soon be creating a new manuscript--unless the writer's gift or calling has been irreparably damaged in the process.

Pearl Diver -- The Writer's Dilemma

The first time I saw the closing scene of Pearl Diver, in which Hannah and Marian walk to the pond, and Marian casts the sheets of her manuscript onto the water, I was furious. Here was Sidney King, a young Mennonite filmmaker--and a Goshen College grad no less--retelling this old, old story of the Mennonite community pressuring the writer to sacrifice her work for the sake of communal harmony. "Hannah's agent must have kept a copy," I thought. Or, "Hannah must have photocopied it before sending it off and this is just a gesture." Even J. K. Rowling, too poor to photocopy the manuscript of her first Harry Potter book, typed out a second copy.

The reason King had chosen to create Hannah as a writer passionately attached to a manual typewriter now became painfully obvious--so he could build up to this ending of her sacrificing the only copy of her manuscript. In this case it also means the sacrifice of a six-figure advance, one big enough to pay all of her niece's medical bills, and a book that would have made her famous. But what do you expect from a woman wedded to a manual typewriter? She might just be eccentric enough to throw away a book she'd written and take up work as a farm hand for a Russian Mennonite immigrant.

Through the conversation on the class blogs about this scene, I've begun to see it in a new light. Hannah's manuscript has already done important healing work by the time she sacrifices it for her sister in the same pond where her sister once risked her life diving for Hannah's lost pen knife with the pearl handle. It has given Isaac enough information about the murder for him to realize that the robbers were after the valuable Russian necklace he'd brought as an engagement present to Rachel, the girls' mother, and then buried in a lunch box in his cornfield when he learned she was married to someone else. His telling this story to the sisters enables Marian to confess to Hannah that not only did she not live up to the Dirk Willems story when she had a chance, but as the traumatized daughter of a murdered woman she allowed her mother's murderer to drown in a manure pit without saving him. In fact, she made sure he would drown by moving a plank that might have served as a life line for him.

After Marian divulges her secret to Hannah she sleeps the sleep of the forgiven, and Hannah's story, while useful, is rendered inaccurate. Perhaps that's why she tosses the story--the truth of the story is too important to Hannah personally for her to be satisfied with a version she now knows is false. Rewritten to incorporate her sister's story, the book would expose Marian. Hannah is unwilling to do this. The healing that her story brings about among a few important people in her life would be undone by publishing a now false version. It's a somewhat contrived plot, and yet the dilemma it articulates is at the heart of every good memoir--whose story is this, and how much can a writer tell without harming others? The Mennonite value that comes forward at the end of King's film is that no work of art is more important than a human relationship. After Hannah casts her manuscript on the waters, Marian takes her hand--something she has not done since the night of the murder when she chose to carry her own shameful secret--for a deed that no one else would have faulted her for doing. For a writer's meditation on the writer's dilemma in Pearl Diver, see Julia Kasdorf's review.

While Hannah's position seems unfair to many of us, Rhoda Janzen's recent memoir, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, is causing us to ask the same question--what is the role of the Mennonite Writer in relation to the community?--from a different angle. Stay tuned for upcoming discussions on this.

Working with Class Blogs

It's been fun watching the blogs emerge. Each one has its own template, title, and writing style. To actually find the different blogs in an efficient way has been tricky, though, until Sara W. showed me today how to create a "Blog List" as part of my blog. You can see the list I've just created in the right hand margin. This way I can conveniently click on each one of your blogs from a central location. Here's how to do this on your blog: log into your site, click on the "Design" tab, and go to "Add a gadget" on the right hand side. One of the gadgets is called "My Blog List." Click on this gadget, and then add the blogs, one URL at a time. If you open a new window in your browser and pull up my blog, you'll easily be able to find the addresses for all of the other blogs. Do this, and you'll save yourself and everyone else in the class heaps of time as we begin responding to each others' blogs on a regular basis.

Pearl Diver -- Archetypes for Mennonite Artists

This week our class watched Pearl Diver, an award-winning film by Goshen College graduate and independent filmmaker Sidney King. The movie is a film about two sisters, one a writer--Hannah Eberly--who has a story to tell, and the other--Marian Miller-- a traditional Mennonite farm wife who doesn't want the story published. The story Hannah is writing is a memoir about a personal tragedy, but it echoes the cultural trauma of the Mennonite Martyr heritage. I asked my students to reflect on stereotype and archetype in this film, and what it tells us about the role of the writer in the Mennonite community.

The sisters meet in their home town when Marian's daughter is injured in a farm accident. This accident triggers traumatic memories of the murder of Hannah and Marian's mother when they were children. The murderer is up for parole and they disagree about whether or not he should be released. I'll have to admit that when Marian holds up a picture of Dirk Willems, a Mennonite martyr, in the courtroom, I inwardly groaned.

The story of Dirk Willems from the 17th century Martyr's Mirror is such an extreme version of turning the other cheek that it is hard to imagine living up to it. Willems, a Mennonite who had been discovered during the Reformation in Holland, was fleeing his pursuer when the pursuer fell through the ice. Dirk stopped, turned around, and rescued his pursuer from sudden death. Although the pursuer wanted to free Dirk, those in higher authority refused. So Dirk was arrested and burned at the stake. The day he was burned the breeze blew the fires away from him, so he was slow-roasted in great agony. Dirk's deed of rescue made a text of his life--an exemplum of loving one's enemy. However, as a role model he sets the standard so high that it's disturbing for some of us to live with it. The way in which this story is woven into the film, though, makes for a thought-provoking ending.

I'm looking forward to hearing my students' responses to Pearl Diver as the first post on the blogs they are keeping for this course. I'll save the rest of my comments until I hear from them.

Welcome to Mennonite Literature

This blog is part of a class that I'm teaching at Goshen College in the Spring of 2011. All of the students in the class are also keeping blogs as a way to record their journey through Mennonite literature this semester. We will subscribe to each others' blogs and you're welcome to follow along.

Our first task will be to explore the Center for Mennonite Writing, come up with some ideas about what "Mennonite Writing" is, and who some of these "Mennonite Writers" are.

On the left is a picture of Gabrielle Giffords in Old Colony Mennonite costume. She studied the Old Colony Mennonites in Mexico on a Fulbright in 1994.