Mothering Mennonite

by Rachel Epp Buller (Editor), Kerry Fast (Editor)

Mothering Mennonite marks the first scholarly attempt to incorporate religious groundings in interpretations of motherhood. The essays included here broaden our understanding of maternal identity as something not only constructed within the family and by society at large, but also influenced significantly by historical traditions and contemporary belief systems of religious communities. Historians and sociologists have produced substantive scholarship on Mennonite women in general, and have thereby paid some attention to Mennonite mothering, but this has been piecemeal. In feminist studies, where maternal scholarship figures increasingly prominently, scholars have not yet addressed mothering in this specific cultural-religious context. The few writers to give their focused attention to mothering in a Mennonite context stem from the literary arts – fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Mennonite Mothering, a multidisciplinary compilation of essays, joins narrative and scholarly voices to address both the roles of mothering in Mennonite contexts and the ways in which Mennonite mothering intersects with and is shaped by the world at large. Essayists address cultural constructions of motherhood within ethno-religious Mennonite communities, examining mother-daughter relationships and intergenerational influences, analyzing visual and literary representations of Mennonite mothers, challenging cultural constructions and expectations of motherhood, and tracing the effects of specific religious and cultural contexts on mothering in North and South America.

312 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2013

Reviews

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read about half the articles in this collection. I especially enjoyed Kirsten Beachy, Mary Ann Loewen, Connie Braun, Susie Stoesz, Wendy Crocker and Cory Anderson. I some cases I knew the author or the subject of the article. This is a good collection. Each collection is burdened with the academic apparatus that justifies the analysis by the author. I suppose it's required, but it detracts the more casual reader. Still, interesting and fresh research!

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredible. this is one that I'll read again.

[Dnicebear · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this anthology, the editors define Mothers as “transmitters of culture and religion, re-creators—even creators—of religion and culture.” (p 1) As the authors bring academic study to their own family backgrounds, I find evidence of all fifteen of the ‘instructions’ given by Aurora Levins Morales to write history as a healer. (“The Historian as Curandera,” p 23-38, Medicine Stories, 1998)
The book is divided into four sections:
I. Picturing Mothers and Daughters
II. Mothering Across Generations
III. Challenging Mennonite Motherhood
IV. Mothering in and Around Culture(s)
I will review the first essay in the first section.
In “The Looking Glass Revisited,” Magdalene Redekop responds to and updates thoughts on an article written in 1988. She explores the value of a particular photograph, how it allows the dead to return through nostalgia (both a poison and a cure), storytelling and as a tool of survival. Her mother’s dress in the photo brings up the occasion, the seamstress, the color and more. To linger in these stories is to spend time with the place women historically exercised creative power, and Redekop notices that she, now, is more interested in exploring the empowered places than in lamenting the disempowered.
To sit together and look at this or any photographs fosters community, a value crucial to Mennonite identity. “The past continues to exist in the present as narrative and it is narrative that makes community.” (p 25) Redekop remembers a photograph that fueled her 1988 essay. In looking through pictures salvaged from the Mennonite sojourn in Russia, “the gap between the captions and the images” got to her, “the fact that many of the pictured women were not identified at all.” (p 27) Redekop recognizes that the lack of identification of the women combined with her own mother’s death all lay beneath her potent polemics 15 years ago. Her writing helped open a space where her mother’s spirit could be felt. Redekop recognizes that “when the history of a Mennonite family is collapsed into church history, women are an endangered species.” (p 27)
Redekop goes on to wrestle with the objects and gestures that rise to her out from the photograph of this essay and finds new ways to allow her mother’s spirit to rise. “The pictures of the dead are unchanging but our ways of responding to them remain alive and change as our lives go forward.” (37)
Redekop’s essay shows the power of demonstrating agency. “Medicinal history must find ways to show the continual exercise of choice by people who appear powerless.” (Morales, p 30)
Each essay is this book speaks to me of healing. “Awake! See new ways of responding to your valuable history—all of it.”
Cindy Wallace says, “The book is not a sentimental or nostalgic praise song for the mothers—though it honors the difficult and important work they have done, it also tends to approach the vexed questions of mothering Mennonite with at least a willingness to be critical. Still, contributors also tend to take seriously the good that can come from practices of mothering empowered by belief.”
http://mennoniteusa.org/menno-snapsho...
From a review by Dorolen Wolfs: “I want to embody my belief that domesticity and intellectual pursuits are compatible.”
My final quote comes from the editors of Mothering Mennonite: “It is experience that Mennonites need to explore if they hope to approach an understanding of their past and a sense of self.”
I took advantage of links at the end of each section to other writings. One article took me to a discussion of whether the Protestant and Catholic Reformations improved conditions for women in the church and to a view that the turning happened at a time when women participated more actively and visibly in religious life. Some historians refer to these times as “interludes of equality.” (“Anabaptist Family and Household Roles in Sixteenth-Century Tirol,” Linda A. Huebert Hecht in Strangers at Home, Kimberly Schmidt and Diane Umble and Steven Reschly, editors, 2003) Does change come best when all genders are respected, valued and participating?

[Marlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of academic articles, essays, poems, memoirs, and reflections of motherhood in Mennonite communities from 19th C Russia to 21 C North America (mainly Canada). Offers nuance through many women’s experiences to debunk stereotypes.