Black And Mennonite

Author explains his faith as an Anabaptiste Mennonite, He answers the question " Can a person be black and Mennonite at the same time?"

Shortlisted for the Thurber Prize for American Humor 22 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list 'Wonderfully intelligent and frank... I loved this book, and Rhoda Janzen. She is a terrific, pithy, beautiful writer, a reliable, sympathetic narrator and a fantastically good sport.' New York Times Rhoda Janzen had reached a crossroads: she had just hit forty when her brilliant husband of fifteen years left her for a guy he met on Gay.com. In the same calamitous week she was hospitalized in a horrible car accident. With no alternatives, Rhoda decided to pack her bags and head home. into the heart of the Christian sect she had spent years longing to escape. Rhoda Janzen might be a bad Mennonite, but nonetheless, her parents and their community welcome her back with open arms, strange food and offbeat advice. ('Why not date your first cousin? He has his own tractor!') It was in this safe place that Rhoda came to terms with her failed marriage; the desire, as a young woman, to leave her sheltered world behind; and the choices that had both freed and entrapped her. 'This book is not just beautiful and intelligent, but also painfully - even wincingly - funny. It is rare that I literally laugh out loud while I'm reading, but Rhoda Janzen's voice - singular, deadpan, sharp-witted and honest - slayed me, with audible results. I have a list already of about fourteen friends who need to read this book. I will insist that they read it. Because simply put, this is the most delightful memoir I've read in ages.' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

Rolling Down Black Stockings is a personal recollection of Esther Royer Ayers's youth spent in a highly restrictive and confined religious community. Her story is as much a search for identity and a longing for a mother's love as it is a tale about a totalitarian culture that led to her departure from the Old Order Mennonite religion. This poignant story is told in three books: book 1 describes her youth in a farm community on the outskirts of Columbiana, Ohio; book 2 follows the struggles of Ayers as she tries to fit in with another culture after leaving the church when her family moves to Akron, Ohio; and book 3 discusses the history and cultural dynamics of the religion. Ayers recounts how the Old Order Mennonite Church came into existence. Her personal account begins when she was eight years old, watching as her mother took care of her sick father. With intel-ligence and insight, Ayers describes how her family coped with the burden of not having enough income, which meant that the children were expected to work instead of getting an education. her Mennonite community, Ayers relates her difficulties trying to fit in at the public school and how she and her siblings were required to fall classes so that they would be expelled. It concludes with reflections on what all this meant to her. A rare and moving memoir, Rolling Down Black Stockings is also a valuable piece of social history that will appeal to historians as well as those interested in separatist communities and women's studies.

"A collection of essays by poet Julia Spicher Kasdorf focusing on aspects of Mennonite life. Essays examine issues of gender, cultural, and religious identity as they relate to the emergence and exercise of literary authority"--Provided by publisher.

In the lives of ordinary people are the truths of history. Such truths abound in the diaries of Jacob Epp, a Russian Mennonite school-teacher, lay minister, farmer, and village secretary in southern Ukraine. This abridged translation of his diaries offers a remarkably vivid picture of Mennonite community life in Imperial Russia during a period of troubled change. Epp’s writings reveal a skilled and honest diarist of deep feelings, and tell a human story that no conventional historical account could hope to equal. The diaries overflow with the details of his workaday world. Family, village, church, and community routines are broken by trips to market, visits to other Mennonite settlements, and a memorable steamer voyage to boomtown Odessa on the Black Sea. He chronicles his long-time involvement in an unusual Imperial experiment in which Mennonites were “model farmers” in Jewish villages. Harvey L. Dyck places the diaries in their historical, ethnocultural, social, religious, economic, and political settings. Based on archival research, interviews, travels, and consultations with other scholars, his detailed and perceptive introduction and analysis trace Jacob Epp’s life and present a sketch and interpretation of his larger family, community, and Imperial world. With striking clarity the diaries and introduction together re-create a time and way of life marked by controversy and flux. They reflect significant facets of the experience of ethno-religious minorities in Imperial Russia and of the development of the southern Ukrainian frontier. Above all, they fill significant missing pages of the great community-centred story of Russian Mennonite life. This book is richly illustrated with maps, black-and-white photographs, and watercolour paintings by Cornelius Hildebrand, Jacob Epp’s former village school pupil and later brother-in-law.