Magical Memoir Moments

Former student and student assistant Amy Houser and her mother Mary Lou.

Encountering Borders and Crossing Boundaries: Metaphorically and Literally

It was a big week in the Shenandoah Valley. An international conference. The world premiere of a play. A book talk about Mennonites and Nazism. Preparations for a 24-day trip to Scandinavia. And, of course, daily check-ins to see how baby Lydia and her parents are doing. The theme of the conference, Crossing the Line, applies,…

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Yeats, Mennonites, and Memoir

At the Mennonite/s Writing VI conference March 30-April 1, 2012, the theme of “the self” recurred often. Poet and scholar Ann Hostetler drew attention to this theme in her talk: “The Self in Mennonite Garb, or, Where Does the Writing Come From?” Hostetler has been thinking about the lyric voice ever since she put together…

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Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: An "Old Mennonite" Review

When I read Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress late at night, the bed posts shook. I had to choke back gargantuan guffaws in order not to wake my Mennonite husband. The last time that happened, I was reading Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Before that, David Sedaris, Michael…

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