Jack Dueck's visit

I really enjoyed having storyteller Jack Dueck speak to us in class on Wednesday. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but whatever my expectations were, Jack exceeded them. I was touched by his dedication to the stories he tells and the way they continue to move him, despite being stories he's no doubt told numerous times.

Jack was full of good little anecdotes about Mennonites, and stories and writing. It was refreshing to see someone so satisfied in what he was doing, especially since (as I've recently been learning in Memoir and Feature Writing) it is rare that writers are able to reap tangible rewards for their efforts. So it's nice to see that even if the rewards of writing aren't tangible, at least they're meaningful.

I particularly enjoyed the story Jack told about the two Mennonite families in a tiff, and despite the tiff one family's son marries the other family's daughter. I thought I detected Jack getting a little emotionaly during the end of this story, and it made me hope that I can someday tell stories that are as meaningful to me as Jack's are to him.

Searching for Intruders

The first three chapters of Searching for Intruders left me feeling horrible. It's so frustrating to read stories in which none of the characters are sympathetic. I felt disgusted after reading the first 6 stories -- how could someone even write something this depressing? I get writer's block if my character is unsympathetic -- where is the motivation in continuing the story of someone who has little to offer? Or perhaps this is kind of a hedonistic thing to say. I've never been able to acknowledge that pain might have as much value as pleasure, if any at all.

The character of Wilson makes me feel very unhappy. The opening story, Roaches, was repulsive in many ways, least of which was the description of the floor of the apartment swarming with roaches. In Roaches and Floating, the reader gets a fairly strong impression of Wilson being a pretty bad husband/boyfriend. Even the short-shorts set between the chapters don't inspire sympathy in me for Wilson, despite the hardship they hint at.

I read a few more chapters of the book, and it helps expand the story and give me a little reason to empathize with Wilson, but still not much.

There is something to be said, however, for the way that, despite not feeling any sort of connection with the characters, something about them makes me want to keep reading. Though maybe that has to do with having to read it for class. :)

How Julia Kasdorf Changed My Life

The essays in Danny Cruz's How Julia Kasdorf Changed My Life were hugely varying. While I loved the theme of the essays -- college students discussing their Mennonite identity or how they've been affected by the Mennonite church in some way -- I felt that there were certainly some that succeeded far more than others.

For example, the essay by Ted Houser, who wrote of his appreciation for being a privileged Mennonite growing up in "The County" (which, for all you who, like me, are NOT "insiders," means Lancaster County, PA), an area that was wealthified* by Hans Herr, one of the original Mennonite inhabitants of The County.

The essay's tone made the author seem completely unsympathetic, as he writes about the cars his friends received on turning 16, or the vacation houses of their parents that he and his friends would retreat to on breaks. As both a Mennonite and the daughter of a surgeon, people have always had a mistaken assumption of the wealth of my upbringing, which, while comfortable, couldn't be called anything other than simple in just the way I've been taught "real" Mennonites do it.

I've always found myself ultra-resistant to having an image of wealth. So Houser writing an essay that gives people the impression that Mennonites are wealthy, and proud of it, offends the sensibility of simplicity that I've grown up with and (though total simplicity is no longer something I really conscientiously go for due to its inconvenience) still value.

The essay I particularly enjoyed was Clarissa Gaff's. Gaff covers a wide range of "Mennonite things" while remaining entertaining, and while some are stereotypical, almost cliche Mennonite sentiments and images, Gaff's voice gave them new life. She was candid without being obnoxiously so and this made her essay quite relatable. Plus, Gaff and her siblings grew up in the same church as I did growing up, so maybe I've got a little bias.


*Yes, I know this is not an actual word, but sometimes I feel like the vocabularial* shortcomings of English can be made amends for by employing all those suffixes we so handily borrowed from other languages.

The Mennonite poems

I'm really NOT into poetry, prowess in writing stunted lines doesn't impress me, and I usually find it to be a waste of a person's writing talent.

However, I really enjoyed two of the poems from A Capella we were assigned to read.

As far as Julia Kasdorf's Mennonites go, it's the one I enjoy the least, though there is definitely a lot of appeal in how relatable the subject matter is, which can also be said of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Kasdorf uses such strong images while also spanning a lot of Mennonite history.

My favorite, Jeff Gundy's poem How to Write the New Mennonite Poem does a lot of really nice things playing with humor and parody. While sometimes I felt like the humor was getting a little base ("...many dead Mennonites were really good. Work in two or three. Dirk Willems is hot this year.") I thought Gundy mostly succeeded in writing a Mennonite poem that both addressed the now-cliches of Mennonite-ism, but also turned them on their head, working in the new stereotypes, drinking exotic coffee, granola, the Peace Tax Fund.

Of the trio of poems, I found David Wright's to be the least relatable, and therefore the one I enjoyed the least. However, it is interesting in that Wright is a Mennonite in a way that is unfamiliar to me, and that is intriguing.

One of the major things these poems brought up in my mind was the issue of audience. THere are many instances in both Gundy and Kasdorf's poems, as well as in MLBD where I feel as though the author is pandering to an audience outside of the Mennonite world, trying through a certain type of humor that I can't quite put a word to (Janzen doing the check-box thing, Gundy talking about liking sex, etc) to make people besides Mennonites like them. Though, of course, I could just be hypersensitive.(I love this picture of Gundy, and it makes me like his poem even more)