Customer Reviews

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(55)
3 star:		(37)
2 star:		(30)
1 star:		(50)

 

 

My expectations for this book? I assumed that this would be an account of returning to one's roots after going out into the real world. Beyond that rather banal description I assumed I'd get special insights into the Mennonite world, including possible rituals and practices with a horse drawn carriage or two thrown in and an account of farm life.
In reality, this is a personal memoir that provides info. about carriages and Mennonite culture with food and recipes thrown in for a bit of flavor. However, at the heart of the matter is this wonderful account of how a series of unfortunate incidents brought the author back home. What I find completely amazing is that when even dealing with really serious or sad issues, Rhoda Janzen does it with such incredible style and humor that I found myself chuckling.
Janzen's writing style is conversational. Her sentences are complex and descriptive, but they flow easily. Best of all, it passed my acid test. Normally if I can't get involved in a book within 20 minutes, that's it. I put it down and don't invest further time or effort.
This book on some level reads like fiction. It's like a really good box of chocolates. I couldn't put it down. I loved the eccentricities of her friends and family. I highly recommend this book.

Fortysomething Rhoda Janzen hasn't spent extended time with her Mennonite family in 25 years. But when her husband leaves their 15-year-marriage and she's injured in a car accident, she trades the costly sabbatical she'd planned from her midwestern college in favor of a few months back home on the west coast.

Janzen (a very likeable narrator) weaves childhood memories with anecdotes from those months spent visiting her parents (both of whom I loved: Dad is "the Mennonite equivalent of the Pope"; Mom is a pragmatic nurse and eternal optimist); her family and friends; and the Mennonite culture. But deep into the book, the story that finally emerges is her recovery (of self and roots) from her mentally ill husband and their failed marriage.

As a memoir, it's uneven. Some passages, even some words, are laugh-out-loud funny and make me thankful to have read this book. Others seem self-indulgent -- more amusing to the author than a reader -- and continue too long and at the expense of more-relevant material. The writing is likened to poetry, but I can see that only in its lack of transitions, not in language or sense evocation. I often wondered "Where are we?" and "When is this happening?"

Probably, this book was prompted by the pressure to produce something tangible from a sabbatical -- and what's more relevant for a teacher of English and creative writing to produce than a book? As a concept and draft, it's terrific; as a published work, it's okay.

Despite small rebellions, Rhoda Janzen stayed close to the Mennonite world she was raised in. That is, until she went to graduate school. At that point, too many of her social, philosophical and spiritual ideas were challenged, causing her life to become more secular. But she never severed ties with her family or the Mennonite community, so when crisis struck in the form of a divorce followed by a debilitating car accident, she was welcomed home with open arms. Her memoir, MENNONITE IN A LITTLE BLACK DRESS, centers on that homecoming but also celebrates a religious community more vibrant and diverse than most people realize.

Janzen may have been primed for the secular world unwittingly by her parents, both of whom were college educated (something very unusual for Mennonites). She and her three siblings were sent to public school and were allowed some spiritual and intellectual freedoms by their thoughtful yet conservative parents. Though her parents may have been inwardly disappointed by her choices to become a poet/professor and to marry the emotionally uneven Nick, they wanted her to be happy and were kindhearted when her turbulent marriage fell apart. In her early 40s, Janzen found herself back in her parents' home, enveloped in a life of German folk songs, strudel, borscht, traditional handicrafts and pious religious beliefs.

With biting humor and unflinching honesty, Janzen chronicles her divorce (the verbally abusive Nick left her for Bob from [...]) and shares childhood adventures and misadventures growing up Mennonite. And although it's Janzen's memoir, the star of the book is quite often her mother, Mary. Mary is funny, warm, and much sassier and worldlier than readers would ever expect. Janzen is tender towards her parents and Mennonite "oldsters" in general, nicely balancing out the tale of marital woe and strife.

MENNONITE IN A LITTLE BLACK DRESS moves back and forth in time from Janzen's childhood to her current life. Her relationships with academia, religion, siblings, her ethnic heritage, and more are explored sharply --- and, at times, too briefly --- and with an interesting perspective and voice. Mennonite life (at least Janzen's Mennonite life) is brought into sharp relief, and all the gender inequalities, dogma and expectations are contrasted with moments of touching warmth, hilarity and unconditional love.

From "the top five shame-based foods for Mennonite youth lunches" to living with a bipolar spouse, from the practice of marrying first cousins to the joy of racquetball, MENNONITE IN A LITTLE BLACK DRESS is pleasantly all over the place. Janzen's style is often conversational, and she masterfully turns phrases, finding the humor in pain and sorrow and the sacred in the ordinary.

While sorting through the wreckage of 15 years married to Nick and recovering from the car accident, Janzen is sorting through her relationship to the Mennonite Church. Her memoir is emotional but never sappy, nostalgic but rarely romantic. Janzen is likable, smart, funny and humble. She is unapologetic in her quest to balance out the best of the Mennonite world with the best of the secular world. Readers will be charmed by this quirky, powerful and unique tale of family, acceptance, identity and belief.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

I tried to like this book, but it is strident and forced rather than humorous. This writer "shouts" and reminds me of the loudest person at a gathering who sucks up all the attention and energy in the room. There was little to make me feel or think as I read. The reminiscences are NOT typically Mennonite, from my perspective as one of them. There is little of grace or beauty or vulnerability or faith in this book. I wanted to identify somehow with the author, but she is invariably harsh and cynical and unlikable. The chapters are all alike; all make fun of her childhood and family and community--to what purpose?

I found this book thoroughly entertaining, and laughed out loud at several points. As other reviewers have already explained, the author, Rhoda Janzen, was raised Mennonite, but as an adult became a secular academic. This book is written when she returns home to her parents after a difficult divorce to heal. The author has a biting wit and insightful eye for detail and irony, and some might find her portrayal of her parents and their friends patronizing. But I didn't, because I sensed her deep love and affection for them. As much as she appears to have rejected her upbringing in the way that she lives, she clearly has maintained an emotional and historian's interest in her familial culture. As she recounts childhood memories, she mixes in her historian's perspective with her emotional reverie, and I think it works quite well.

My only issue was that overall the book doesn't really go anywhere. There's no arc, like there is in the best-told memoirs, partly because Ms. Janzen is only willing to share so much. She shares some details of her marriage and the divorce, but it feels a bit distant and limited, and it's not linear, so it's tough to get a sense of her healing as a process. So while I loved the individual anecdotes, both from her childhood and from her time with her parents while she stays with them, I didn't connect with her overall healing process in a way that would have lifted this book to another level for me.

But overall, a funny, intelligent read. And if you are wondering what the difference is between the Amish and the Mennonites, she even has an appendix to let you know!

I am really disappointed with this book. It is not a humorous memoir, or a book where you can discover what life is like for a woman who grew up as a Mennonite but left to go out into the wide world and then went home again, but rather a sarcastic and condescending description of holiday times the author spent with her family. Certain portions of the book are quite vulgar and tasteless, with discussions of various family members and in-laws' body parts and anatomy set forth in graphic detail. I can't imagine a family that sits around discussing their private body parts with other family members like that and I can't imagine a member of the family then going and writing a book for everybody else to read if they did. That just shows a lack of respect for others and their basic dignity. The author continuously tells the reader how very smart and educated she is and how that is why she is not religious, implying that those who are religious are neither smart nor educated. In spite of her extreme intelligence and educational attainments, however, she does not understand basic and fundamental tenets of Christianity or Catholicism against which she takes some cheap and unfounded shots, just because I guess, since she isn't a Catholic or a Christian. The whole book is just one person's sort of snarky, snobby critique of those, especially those in her family, who are just a little too tacky for her, or of those poor, stupid misguided religous people, who don't know any better, poor souls. All in all, the book is really disappointing, definitely not funny or enjoyable, but instead just sort of depressing. I don't recommend it.

I looked forward to this book, but it was very disappointing. I felt sorry for Rhoda's family, especially her parents, as she continually makes fun of them and her heritage throughout the book. She describes her parents as homely, cheap, ignorant, stuck in the wrong century, embarrassing, too cheerful, too helpful -- then why did she choose to go back to such an awful place in her time of need?? To be disrespected and degraded by one's child in such a fashion must have been very painful for Rhoda's parents. The book was long and went into lots of minute detail about random topics. I kept waiting for the point where there was some resolution, but that didn't come. I would not recommend this book.

I was really looking forward to this book after reading the rave reviews here and having friends suggest it. Other reviewers went so far as to liken this book to Sedaris or Nora Ephron and I'm suprised: they couldn't be more wrong. While the author is probably a likeable, affable, fun person in real life the book comes across vacant, disjointed, lacking in depth and totally superficial. When I read a memoir I want to learn along with the person, or be shown what they learned, and this book does none of that. I kept waiting for the plot or something to kick in but it never did. The author is an okay writer, and could have an amusing voice, but I can't believe the rave reviews this thing is getting. It isn't "hilarious" or "touching". It is rather shallow, after reading it I felt like something huge was missing: A story. The author does indeed face some huge trials but you don't know it from the odd way she glosses over things, I still can't figure out it she is in denial or comfortable with being a co-dependant door mat. I just kept waiting for the meat of the memoir to kick in and it never did. The whole book could easilty be whittled down into a small humor essay, nothing more. If you still want to read this book go to the library or buy it used and super cheap, it isn't worth the money. I wish it had lived up to even 1/10th the potential it seemed to have.

At first glance, this book appears to have promise-- Janzen's writing is entertaining, and her family (especially her mother) is lovable. HOWEVER, it turns out that this is a great read for the atheist reader who is not looking for any genuine insights on the Mennonite way of life.

Janzen has wasted her 241-page "mark on the world" to mock and insult the Mennonite community, and her own family in particular. My heart especially goes out to her brothers, whom she especially mocks, just for the simple reason that they do their best to raise happy, wholesome, and healthy kids. She claims to be on a spiritual "journey" yet her views are one-sided, and she is determined to mock every other view that does not match her own. Clearly, her journey has yet to bring about the faith and healing that she needs (not to mention a true respect for her Mennonite family).

All throughout the book, Janzen makes sure to constantly refer to herself as a "scholar", "intellectual", "grammarian", and "academic". One gets the feeling that she is trying hard to convince her own self of her credibility and worth, and unfortunately it gets very tiresome for the reader. Even more unfortunately, if she turned to the very God that she mocks, she would know that He has bestowed her with far more worth and love, than any of her "accomplishments" ever will.

If you are looking for any insights or an objective view of Mennonite life, I certainly do not recommend this book.

I seldom write reviews for the books I have read, but as I was very disappointed with this one, I felt I needed to add my thoughts. This is a Memoir written by Ms. Janzen. It is her perception and thoughts of her life. I was raised in the Mennonite community and chose to leave it; but, I still have respect for it. I hope people reading this book understand that Ms. Janzen does not represent the Mennonite community as a whole, and disrespects her family and the culture/denomination she was raised in. I actually feel sorry for her, if this is infact how she views her life and her relationships. Although I found a few familiar changes (i.e. regarding Mennonites and their view on dancing)I found nothing to laugh at.