Who is the Mennonite Writer?
Three "Mennonite" poems from A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry suggest that the answer to this question is complicated.
"Mennonites" by Julia Spicher Kasdorf was written when the poet was a graduate student at New York University. In a talk to my students a few years back, Julia said that in New York she felt a "difference" in herself--not visible to the eye--but a sense of belonging to another world, another people. She wrote this poem in order to understand her identity. What were the attitudes, the values, the assumptions, the history she carried that set her apart?
The result is a poem that many Mennonites have identified with--aha! that is my experience--or that of my parents, or grandparents. To a non-Mennonite audience, Julia's specific images and historical references create a fascinating portrait of a little-understood religious minority. Julia's poem appeared in the early 1990s, when American readers were developing a new interest in culturally diverse literature--a trend that helped to encourage the rapid development of Mennonite literature at this time.
Julia's poem uses the "declarative" sentence and the pronoun "we" to create a kind of manifesto or creed. Its images are agricultural, homespun, historical. While Julia manages to get at the intertwined histories of two different strands of Mennonites in this poem--the Swiss Brethren and the Dutch-German-Russian Mennonites--some of her statements are ironic, or even a bit sarcastic. Mennonites both worry that they may not be as perfect as their heavenly Father, BUT they also clean up HIS disasters. Mennonites fear that they will be damned by sins "so deep in our organs" that they do not even know about them. Mennonite history is one of violence--martyrs, forced migration, pacifism that prompts persecution--and non-violent response. Julia throws out a question that is also a challenge to Mennonites and their theologians: "This is why we cannot leave the beliefs or what else would we be?"
Jeff Gundy's poem, "How to Write the New Mennonite Poem," was written a few years later as a kind of tongue-in-cheek response to Julia's poem and the sudden emergence of "Mennonite" writing. Gundy is clearly skeptical about "ethnic" writing for its own sake. His poem is written like a recipe--suggesting a formula of fraktur, quilts, dead grandmothers and lost farms that will evoke the proper ethnic atmosphere. The audience for this poem is primarily Mennonite--and the reader is even addressed as "you" and assumed to be an urban Mennonite with expensive habits and lots of guilt. Jeff's poem was first published in Mennonot, an alternative magazine of humor and the arts, subtitled "For Mennos on the Margins." Guilt seems to be the common thread in Julia's and Jeff's poems. When I read Jeff's poem a few years ago to a class of students at Lancaster Mennonite High School, hoping to make them laugh, one of the students responded: "Boy, I'm glad I'm not a Mennonite!"
Gundy's poem raises an important question--or several. What makes a Mennonite poem? When poems use ethnic symbols and images just to gain the attention of readers looking for an exotic experience, is the reader cheated? Will a self-conscious, angst-ridden experience--if it's genuine--make for a more genuine "Mennonite" poem? Is the real Mennonite one who is guilt-ridden for not living up the the examples of his ancestors, now polished to perfection in stories? Who is the Mennonite writer? And who is his/her audience?
David Wright, in "A New Mennonite Replies to Julia Kasdorf," joins the conversation with a fresh perspective. Locating himself in an urban Mennonite congregation where people drive volvos and bring lentils and free-range chicken to the potluck, he describes a Mennonite gathering where people come together to express their faith, rather than carry on a tradition. David came to the Mennonites as an adult from a background in various independent evangelical churches. He's a convert Mennonite, not a cradle Mennonite, and one of the elements his poem lacks is a sense of guilt. David responds to Julia's question about beliefs by suggesting that there are contemporary Mennonite beliefs and practices that have something to offer the world--it's not just about carrying on a faith out of historical obligation. However, David's audience is a fairly specific Mennonite poetry-reading one, as his title makes clear. The congregation he describes is similar to several urban ones I've been a part of. In fact, this is the poem that most of my students most closely identify with. The poem shows the importance of bringing the non-traditional voice into a living, growing faith.
Hi Ann, a very interesting series/conversation. What a great idea, you and your students blogging responses to the course material!
ReplyDeleteIt's odd for me to think of Mennonite literature as “ethnic” writing, because I don't usually think of Mennonites as a “minority” or in terms of their “ethnicity”--usually when I hear these words, I think about American Indians or African Americans. But as you point out, Ann, I think that Kasdorf does a good job of emphasizing the cultural connections between individual Mennonites that make our community an ethnicity of its own. Really, all of these poems do this in their own way—Wright's by saying that modern Mennonite culture is eating lentils at potlucks, Gundy's (with some skepticism) saying that to be Mennonite, you've got to believe in granola and the Peace Tax Fund.
ReplyDeleteI was just talking with some Mennonite friends about what we plan to do next year, and I thought it was interesting that some people said they wanted to remove themselves from the Mennonite ethnic community that has surrounded them all of their lives, while some people feel much safer within this community. I am ethnically Mennonite but didn't grow up in a Mennonite community or culture—the only Mennonites I knew were my parents. So when I came to Goshen, there was something comforting about realizing that there is this huge community of people, which I hadn't known about till then, who share a lot of the same values I was raised to believe in, and who also didn't have TVs when they were little. I think there's a lot more to analyze about this idea of Mennonites as an ethnicity of their own, so maybe I'll write a blog about it.
Sarah, thanks for bringing up this perspective on ethnicity. Religion is made up both of culture and of faith--and when part of the faith is to live very intentionally in small, committed communities, the cultural component becomes much more pronounced. It's a way of sharing experience, values, and communicating with each other in shorthand. In fact, the emphasis on community in Mennonite experience--of practicing one's faith in a group of committed "disciples"-- is really the basis any claim for Mennonite ethnicity. That, and the shared history/story.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely something we need to--and will--talk about in class. Please bring up the topic again! And look forward to reading your blog about it.
Do you, personally, think that the uses of person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) pushes the reader away or brings them closer to their poems? For me, I was not able to connect with any of the poems due to my LACK-OF a background. Do you think that after the 90s, it brought out more Mennonite writers or has it been the same over time?
ReplyDeleteJamie, these are both good questions. As far as the use of person is concerned, I think that the use of second person--"you"--tends to push the reader away, at least when the poem is addressed to a "you" that the reader does not know. Jeff Gundy's poem addresses the reader as a "you." If his description does not fit the reader, or if the reader is unwilling to "pretend" what it would be like to be that "you," I think the reader gets pushed away. So second person, in general, is a risky person to use--though it can be effective when used judiciously. "I" is easier to relate to, I think, unless the "I" is so self-absorbed that it is not really relating to the reader. Kasdorf's poem uses a "we"--which could be talking either to a Mennonite or a non-Mennonite audience. The non-Mennonite reader will then listen curiously as to a group explaining itself. The Mennonite reader in that poem is treated more like an insider. When a write uses third person (non of these poems uses it) then we are asked to be an observer, but sometimes a very intimate observer.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that Mennonite writing was happening all along, but until the 1960s or so, very little of it attempted to address those outside of the community. As Mennonites got more educated, and more and more of them became cosmopolitan readers (that is, they read literary work by non-Mennonite authors), more Mennonite writing developed. I think that the literature develops at the crossroads of several cultures, when the imagination is needed to cross boundaries and perspectives and help us learn what others' lives and thoughts are like. If you look at the new Mennonite writers emerging, there were many more in the US in the 1990s and 2000s--encouraged by the virtual community that formed around Mennonite writing. In Canada, this started happening in the 1970s and it has continued till the present time.