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CURRENTLY IN BOOKS
Mennonite poet explores past, authority for work

Sarah Klassen

THE BODY AND THE BOOK: Writing From a Mennonite Life Julia Kasdorf. Baltimore, Md.: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001. Hardcover. 232 pp.

In her newest book, a collection of essays, Julia Kasdorf – who grew up in an Amish community in Pennsylvania – reflects on how the pull of a patriarchal society, the power of language, and the reality of the female body have shaped the writer and her writing.

When her first book of poetry The Sleeping Preacher was in production, Kasdorf was concerned about its reception. What would the Amish community say to her version of their story? She knew “ . . . that when a writer attempts to render a common experience without mouthing the common beliefs, conflict is imminent.”

Kasdorf explores the possibility of retaining one’s identity and authenticity in community, especially for the artist and others on the periphery. Individuals who challenge a group’s norms, she argues, are “best able to initiate conversations that help to determine the Body’s shape.” It is the artist’s task, she contends, to give “form to the chaos of life”, and that is not done by suppressing dissonant voices, but by expressing them. The church would do well to take note.

Although these essays grow out of considerable research and thinking, they are not pedantic. That’s because Kasdorf begins with stories about real people: her father as a young boy talking with a tramp on the veranda; boisterous, bold and even bossy Aunt Bertha leaving home; the Amish bishop who kept his daughter chained to her bed; and John R. Ruth’s experience with mullein. Using narratives as starting points, she explores the question of how a writer who is of Amish background and a woman achieves authority for her work.

The images that illustrate these essays also serve as starting points for discussion. In “Work and Hope”, Kasdorf traces the evolution of a printer’s mark found in most editions of Martyrs’ Mirror, the image of a man digging under the motto Arbeite und Hoffe (Work and Hope). She claims both image and motto for herself, believing that a poet’s work of remembering is “ . . . at least as worthy as working the earth.”

Sarah Klassen is a poet and fiction writer living in Winnipeg.

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Last modified January 9, 2003.

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