Mennonite Valley Girl

“In luminous prose that effortlessly portrays the intimate and familiar pangs of growing up, Funk captivates from the get-go, and the ’80s nostalgia will hit the spot for those who came of age amid skyscraper bangs, acid-washed jeans, and the ubiquity of teen heartthrob Kirk Cameron. These small-town stories are big on charm.” —Publishers Weekly A funny and whip-smart memoir about a feisty young woman’s quest for independence in an isolated Mennonite community. Carla Funk is a teenager with her hands on the church piano keys and her feet edging ever closer to the flames. Coming of age in a remote and forested valley—a place rich in Mennonites, loggers, and dutiful wives who submit to their husbands—she knows her destiny is to marry, have babies, and join the church ladies’ sewing circle. But she feels an increasing urge to push the limits of her religion and the small town that cannot contain her desires for much longer. Teenage (Mennonite) angst at its finest: Carla questions the patriarchal norms of Mennonite society and yearns to break free. She’ll start by lighting her driveway on fire …. A family story: the perfect gift for mothers, daughters, sisters, and fathers and sons. Pitch-perfect 1980s nostalgia: remember Jordache jeans? For readers of Miriam Toews: heart wrenching and humorous descriptions of Mennonite life. At once a coming-of-age story, a contemplation on meaning, morality, and destiny, and a hilarious time capsule of 1980s adolescence, Mennonite Valley Girl offers the best kind of escapist reading for anyone who loves small towns, or who was lucky enough to grow up in one.

"A funny and whip-smart memoir about a feisty young woman's quest for independence in an isolated Mennonite community. Carla Funk is a teenager with her hands on the church piano keys and her feet edging ever closer to the flames. Coming of age in a remote and forested valley--a place rich in Mennonites, loggers, and dutiful wives who submit to their husbands--she knows her destiny is to marry, have babies, and join the church ladies' sewing circle. But she feels an increasing urge to push the limits of her religion and the small town that cannot contain her desires for much longer. -Teenage (Mennonite) angst at its finest: Carla questions the patriarchal norms of Mennonite society and yearns to break free. She'll start by lighting her driveway on fire .... -A family story: the perfect gift for mothers, daughters, sisters, and fathers and sons. -Pitch-perfect 1980s nostalgia: remember Jordache jeans? -For readers of Miriam Toews: heart wrenching and humorous descriptions of Mennonite life. At once a coming-of-age story, a contemplation on meaning, morality, and destiny, and a hilarious time capsule of 1980s adolescence, Mennonite Valley Girl offers the best kind of escapist reading for anyone who loves small towns, or who was lucky enough to grow up in one."--

From an award-winning essayist and acclaimed poet comes this radiant, observant, and warmly funny memoir about childhood, family, and small-town life. Carla Funk grew up in a place of logging trucks and God, pellet guns and parables. Every Sunday, she sat with her mother and brother in the same pew at the Mennonite church while her dad stayed home with his cigarettes and a fridge full of whiskey. In these tender, humorous stories, Funk stitches together the wondrous and the mundane: making snow angels and carrying sacks of potatoes, tossing pig bladders like footballs, and vying for the Christmas pageant spotlight. Part ode to childhood, part love letter to rural life, Every Little Scrap and Wonder offers an original take on the memories, stories, and traditions we all carry within ourselves, whether we planned to or not.

Capturing microscopic moments in time and nature, Carla Funk’s poems bring the world to a momentary standstill. Funk translates vivid description and feeling into her poems, both testing and playing with traditional poetic form. Her writing reflects the natural world and tells the story of life’s experiences. Apologetic’s poems experiment with expressing thoughts and emotions in formal poetic traditions, confining words to metrical lines or rhyme schemes. Many deal with the natural world, moments in time spent outdoors, in gardens, and capturing fleeting impressions in the human experience. Playing with form and content, Funk evokes the idea of a flesh-and-bones body (the poetic structure) carrying a spiritual entity (the poem’s meaning). “Highway 16 Sonnet” uses the traditional sonnet form to capture a gruesome snapshot of roadkill as a harsh reality of travel on a Canadian highway. “Ring Around the Moon” describes in 5 verses of four lines each, the experience of taking out the garbage late at night and observing the beautiful night sky, something hallowed above the stench of waste.

Ted Swartz and his Ted & Company TheaterWorks team are known for blending Bible stories with comedy and poignancy, and pushing the envelope on issues of faith and social justice. But who is Ted Swartz? Follow along in this engaging memoir as Swartz finds his way as a middle child in an eastern Pennsylvania traditional Mennonite home to his early work in the family butcher shop. Journey with Ted through the decision of uprooting his young family to attend seminary and then embracing life as a writer and actor. Get a glimpse into the friendship that led to the formation of the popular acting duo Ted & Lee. This uniquely honest backstage tour of an artist's life and mind combines side-splitting reminiscences, heart-rending accounts of loss, and touching stories of restored faith and love. Swartz's engaging humor blends with his own stories of triumph and tragedy, and helps readers understand their own sense of place and how they're shaped by those around them. Read the forward by Bryan Mclaren under the "Excerpt" tab and see what is already being said about the book under the "Quotes" tab! "Laughter Is Sacred Space is even funnier than Mennonite in a Little Black Dress—an authentic and profound snapshot of what it means to grow up and live Mennonite." —Howard Zehr, professor of restorative justice, Eastern Mennonite University "Ted Swartz is a gift. He unveils some of the most tragic pain and injustice of our world . . . but he knows that if we can't laugh then the devil has already won. Laughter reminds us that we know the end of the story—and in the end we see life conquer death and love triumph over hatred." —Shane Claiborne, author, activist, and lover of Jesus About the author Purchase Ted and Company scripts and DVDs

“Shakil is a rare jewel in the work of what it means to heal, repair, and take responsibility... This book is required reading for anyone interested in building a loving, just and diverse world.” —Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, Zen teacher & author of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up Racial justice without shame or blame. Road-tested tools to start making a difference today. In Deep Diversity, award-winning racial justice educator Shakil Choudhury explores the emotionally loaded topic of racism using a compassionate, scientific approach that everyone can understand—whether you are Black, Indigenous, a person of color (BIPOC), or white. With clear language and engaging stories that will appeal to readers of Brené Brown and Malcom Gladwell, Choudhury explains how and why well-intentioned people can perpetuate systems of oppression, often unconsciously. Using a trauma-informed approach that removes shame or blame, he offers us the tools to recognize, take authentic responsibility, and enact deep change. In easy-to-absorb chapters, Choudhury interweaves research into the brain and studies on human behavior with hard-won lessons from his career of helping organizations and CEOs create more inclusive environments. He models vulnerability and mistake-making, sharing examples of his own bias-missteps so readers are encouraged into their own racial justice journey without judgment. Readers will come away from the book with practical tools and an understanding of: How to becomes a systems thinker by developing “racial pattern recognition” skills in order to challenge racism and other forms of systemic discrimination when we encounter them, while minimizing the tendency to shame or blame ourselves or others. How to recognize when the unconscious influence of bias, identity, emotions, or power contradict our beliefs about equality, and how to realign our thoughts/words/actions. How to break the racial “prejudice habits” we have all been socialized into since birth, using research-based strategies. How the rise in authoritarianism and income inequality (among other factors) contribute to a rise in hate crimes and racial discrimination, and what to do about it. Traditional approaches to anti-racism overly rely on analyzing history to explain systemic discrimination, which only tells us a part of the story. What’s missing, Choudhury argues, is to understand why humans do what we do, the evolutionary impulses underlying our group-ish nature and our struggles with power, bias, and social dominance. This is why psychology and neuroscience perspectives are critical to integrate into anti-racist work, as is practicing compassion for ourselves and for others. Deep Diversity is a unique, evidence-based approach to racial justice that seeks to overcome feelings of shame that so often block our progress and prevent deep change at individual and systemic levels. Deep Diversity meets you where you’re at, regardless of your identity, class, ability, or belief system, and invites you to come along on a journey of self-discovery, social awareness, and lifelong learning. It’s only just begun. “Choudhury draws on heart-touching stories, research on the brain, and hard-won lessons from real-world interventions to offer useful strategies to know ourselves, and others better.”—New York Times-bestselling author of Buddha’s Brain, Rick Hanson

“I promise: you will be transported,” says Bill Moyers of this memoir. Part Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, part Growing Up Amish, and part Little House on the Prairie, this book evokes a lost time, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, when a sheltered little girl named after Shirley Temple entered a family and church caught up in the midst of the cultural changes of the 1950”s and ‘60’s. With gentle humor and clear-eyed affection the author, who grew up to become a college president, tells the story of her first encounters with the “glittering world” and her desire for “fancy” forbidden things she could see but not touch. The reader enters a plain Mennonite Church building, walks through the meadow, makes sweet and sour feasts in the kitchen and watches the little girl grow up. Along the way, five other children enter the family, one baby sister dies, the family moves to the “home place.” The major decisions, whether to join the church, and whether to leave home and become the first person in her family to attend college, will have the reader rooting for the girl to break a new path. In the tradition of Jill Ker Conway’s The Road to Coorain, this book details the formation of a future leader who does not yet know she’s being prepared to stand up to power and to find her own voice. The book contains many illustrations and resources, including recipes, a map, and an epilogue about why the author is still Mennonite. Topics covered include the death of a child, Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, the role of bishops in the Mennonite church, the paradoxes of plain life (including fancy cars and the practice of growing tobacco). The drama of passing on the family farm and Mennonite romance and courtship, as the author prepares to leave home for college, create the final challenges of the book.

From Alberta, a young Mennonite girl arrives in BC, a"promised land of fruit and relatives. The fruit, it turns out, needs pickers and relatives want kids to work. Even her imagined fabulous "States" is across a border. Her parents buy a farm on Clearbrook Road and she's in a village where everyone attends church and knows things. Pastures with huge stumps turn into berry patches and farmyards grow chicken barns. There's a Fraser River flood, a death in her school. She makes new friends at the MEI high school. She keeps a five year journal, champions justice and rebels against female/male stereotypes. She discovers roller skating, group dating and the secular world. For the Mennonite village it is a time of creeping modernity where kids explore choices and parens are consumed with relief work with post WWII refugees arriving from Europe. Her parents were refugees from Soviet Russia. The many photographs in the book, taken by amateurs with inexpensive cameras (mostly from family albums) reflect the late 1940s and early 1950s where teenage views and the community too were often still emerging.