Final Exam Essay

As more Mennonite Literature is produced, the question is raised as to whether this literature is serving to renew the culture or becoming a barrier for readers from the traditions of the Mennonite ethnicity and its culture due to outdatedness and difficult subject matter that is hard for more contemporary readers to relate to. Looking at the Canadian Mennonite literature we studied in this course shows that the literature is doing a bit of both.

Rudy Wiebe's Peace Shall Destroy Many, as an older, more pessimistic novel about Russian Mennonites in Canada, does little to renew interest in heritage and culture. Wiebe writes of the Mennonite Brethren roots in Canada in a very off-putting way. In the end, the reader discovers that none of the characters is sympathetic, they are all portrayed negatively and hopelessly. For example, Thom Wiens' violence in the end, and apparent total religious personality switch. Or the general awfulness of characters like Block and the Ungers. Stories like this make me ashamed of my ancestry.

Katya, too, made me feel this way. The history of Mennonites in Russia and then their migration to Canada is undeniably ugly. Perhaps this is how it is (kind of) for Catholics thinking of persecuting anabaptists, or the way Christians relate to stories of the Crusades. It is uncomfortable for us to confront the negativity in our past. For this reason, I think novels like PSDM and Katya aren't serving to renew the community and its culture, because, for many, these are things we'd like to sweep under the rug. However, these are stories that do need to be told, as a legitimate part of the Mennonite history. So it is hard to say only that they create barriers to identifying culturally with one's community.

A Complicated Kindness was our third Canadian Mennonite novel, and, while not really optimistic, this novel was more renewing for the Mennonite community than the other two, especially when considering contemporary audiences, particularly younger Mennonites who have little to relate to in PSDM and Katya.

ACK and Toews' excellent telling of Nomi's struggle with growing up in this strict religious community, learning that she ought to be in the world, not of it, is a great anchor for younger Mennonites.

Really, though, all the works are renewing in the way that they are telling the stories of our heritage--stories that need and deserve to be told.

Canadian Poets

Reading the Canadian poets' poems in A Capella felt a little bit like I was reading the first half of Sleeping Preacher. A lot of the poems felt to me to be written around a focal event, a historical event, a familial event, like Kasdorf's were.

Though I don't read much poetry, it seems to me as though most of the non-Mennonite poetry I've encountered hasn't been so family-focused as the Mennonite poetry we've read this semester. Of course, family and heritage and the earth are hugely important things to Mennonites, but there are many many groups and sects producing poets (aren't there?) and aren't family and heritage important to everyone?

I especially enjoy the poems about nature and the earth, that speak of the rawness of the world around us, and how we are blessed by it. For example, Patrick Friesen's "clearing poems" or David Waltner-Toews' "How the Earth Loves You" with its mix of body and nature imagery. Leonard Neufeldt's poems, like "Dyke View Berry Farm," and "The tree with a hole in our front yard."

A Complicated Kindness

I was impressed by Miriam Toews' A Complicated Kindness. Though a fairly dark novel, it looked at coming of age in a really unique way. I'm curious to know how much of the story reflected Toews' own upbringing and how much of it was fiction.

I was extremely taken with the way Toews' emphasis wasn't on "Mennonites" specifically or overtly, but, as a Mennonite, there seemed to me to be a lot of "commentary" on the ways of Mennonites, and not just the kind in the Nickels' church.

The Nickels weren't really that "Mennonite" in the way Rhoda Janzen's family was, talking about borscht and frugality. In fact, the only really overtly Mennonite mention in A Complicated Kindness seems to be Nomi's mentions of Menno. ACK kind of seemed like it was halfway between Searching for Intruders and Peace Shall Destroy Many on a scale of overt Mennoniteness.

At least in terms of my own experience, Nomi Nickel portrayed a coming of age that I felt mirrored my own in ways, though mine lacked the drugs and sex of Nomi's. Her struggles with hell, the conflict between her sister and parents, her reaction to The Mouth, and dealing with abandonment were all themes that reflected my own experience growing up Mennonite in a generation that feels as though it differs greatly from my parents'. Toews explored these themes tenderly and effectively through Nomi.

Katya

I thought that an interesting parallel between Katya and Peace Shall Destroy Many was the way in which pacifism/non-resistance is addressed.

In Peace Shall Destroy Many the protagonist, Thom Wiens, struggles throughout the book with many theological questions, but seems, to me at least, to have one ideal that he sticks to fervently: pacifism. This is the oft-repeated reason for his dislike of Herb, and one of the things that Thom proudly points out as one of the differences between the two young men. But in the end, Thom gets into a brawl with two other young men for no real discernible reason other than he wants to punch Herb.

In Katya, the titular character's father is a very peaceful pacifist man. Even in the face of the death of himself and many of his friends and family, Peter sticks to his beliefs. And then they all (or most of them) die.

This paints a less than favorable or appealing picture of pacifists. Though one could say that Peter's death is similar to that of the Anabaptist Martyrs, it is hardly glorified in the same way. And Thom's betrayal of the beliefs he claimed for so long to adhere to hardly made Mennonites look convicted or admirable.