Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home
- ISBN 10: 080508925X
- ISBN 13: 9780805089257
- Author: Rhoda Janzen
- Edition: Hardcover
- Release: 2009-10-13
- Format: Hardcover (256 pages)
- List Price: $22.00
- Tags: Biographies & Memoirs, General, General AAS, Memoirs, Specific Groups, Women
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Book Description: A hilarious and moving memoir—in the spirit of Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron—about a woman who returns home to her close-knit Mennonite family after a personal crisisNot long after Rhoda Janzen turned forty, her world turned upside down. It was bad enough that her brilliant husband of fifteen years left her for Bob, a guy he met on Gay.com, but that same week a car accident left her with serious injuries. What was a gal to do? Rhoda packed her bags and went home. This wasn’t just any home, though. This was a Mennonite home. While Rhoda had long ventured out on her own spiritual path, the conservative community welcomed her back with open arms and offbeat advice. (Rhoda’s good-natured mother suggested she date her first cousin—he owned a tractor, see.) It is in this safe place that Rhoda can come to terms with her failed marriage; her desire, as a young woman, to leave her sheltered world behind; and the choices that both freed and entrapped her.Written with wry humor and huge personality—and tackling faith, love, family, and aging—Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is an immensely moving memoir of healing, certain to touch anyone who has ever had to look homeward in order to move ahead. Rhoda Janzen holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was the University of California Poet Laureate in 1994 and 1997. She is the author of Babel’s Stair, a collection of poems, and her poems have also appeared in Poetry, The Yale Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Southern Review. She teaches English and creative writing at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. “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 the most delightful memoir I've read in ages.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love “This is an intelligent, funny, wonderfully written memoir.  Janzen has a gift for following her elegant prose with the perfect snarky aside.  If it weren't for the weird Mennonite food, I would like very much to be her friend.”—Cynthia Kaplan, author of Why I'm Like This and Leave the Building Quickly “Rhoda Janzen, a stunning woman, has written a funny book, very funny when she gets to cranking on her family, and she gets to cranking. The writing enjoys the exactitude of poetry, and the comedic melody runs over a bass line of intellection that makes things gratifying in ways lesser books are not. Spectacular merde falls into this life. It's a marvelous book of brave cheer.”—Padgett Powell, author of The Interrogative Mood"The author takes stock of the tribulations, tragedy and hilarity that has shaped her experiences thus far, reexamining religious roots, familial influences and personal choices. Janzen excavates her past with the might of a backhoe and the finesse of an archaeologist's brush. Lines as jolting as 'Nick had been drinking and offering to kill me and then himself,' about her troubled ex-husband, are tempered by poignant moments of grace during her recovery from a debilitating accident: 'Because I couldn't raise my right arm, students sprang up to take notes on the board.' The author's relatives feature prominently throughout the narrative, her mother's quirky sensibilities bubbling over in merry nuggets of old-fashioned, home-spun wisdom. Punctuating overarching themes of blithe humor and Mennonite values are brief glimpses of raw despair, which Janzen eloquently, albeit briefly, explores. The recurring question of whether her abusive former spouse ever loved her is found in numerous contexts—solemn, analytical, even whimsical . . . Within the humor, Janzen offers depictions of calamity and dark truths about regrettable relationships . . . A buoyant, somewhat mordant ramble through triumphs, upheavals and utter normalcy."—Kirkus Reviews“This soulful, affecting first memoir . . . will enchant anyone who has ever gone back home after suffering a setback.”—Library Journal (starred review)“Janzen looks at her childhood religion with fresh, twinkling eyes . . . Janzen is always ready to gently turn the humor back on herself, though, and women will immediately warm to the self-deprecating honesty with which she describes the efforts of friends and family to help her re-establish her emotional well-being.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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