Table of Content
Can't remember the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. It made sense, I suppose, that a woman who would promote endogamous marriage would not blink at a pothead. I thought I would try to elicit more information along these lines. "Well, he doesn't really believe in cell phones," she apologized. For my father, belief in cell phones was somehow optional.
Thanks, Dora, for summarizing Valerie Weaver-Zercher's review for the Christian Century, and for sharing that perspective with our readers as well. It's insightful that Weaver-Zercher acknowledged her own Mennonite vantage point in the review. I appreciate your parenthetical comment that "leaving" and "not leaving" may be categories that have more overlap than we sometimes acknowledge. It seems that memoir is one good place to explore the overlap.
Similar Titles From NoveList
When I read about her embarrassments in school at being so different than the other children, I definitely understood that feeling - - and I was in a school that was 99.9% Mennonites! I am certain that other people from minority backgrounds, or even unusual home backgrounds would understand that feeling too. I finished Janzen's book this week and I think it probably reads better if you don't have a Mennonite context. For someone as educated as she is, she has a surprisingly provincial view of the Mennonite world that is bound to annoy Mennonites. And, she commits one of my pet peeves which is to characterize widely shared experiences as uniquely Mennonite. Repeatedly, humor serves as the transitional glue that holds the book’s seemingly disparate elements together.
Rhoda Janzen writes of her Mennonite upbringing and family with great respect. I could go on about other small things that bugged me, but I think they only bothered me because I was already so annoyed with the book and author overall. This book is quite popular--I was number 87 in line to get it from the library--so clearly there are many others who do not share my opinion. Maybe it's just me on this one, I don't know. I read the first 60 pages of this book one night when I couldn't sleep. It had me laughing hysterically many times in that 60 pages.
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen – review
Meanwhile she is fighting a court battle with Nick over shared mortgage payments on their house – which won't sell. Why did she spend 15 years with a bipolar man who told her repeatedly that he hated her? Is it her Mennonite background that made her so passive? And should she now consider her mother's urgent suggestion – that she marry her first cousin? Were there some absolutely belly laugh funny moments.
Earning comparisons with David Sedaris and Justin Halpern , this one book has transformed its author from an obscure academic into one of America's foremost humorists. The combination of her unfortunate circumstances and her bizarre background is the key, of course. She mines both for intense comic effect – but also with self-deprecation, fondness and insight. In the beginning we learn of Rhoda's surgery and tragic car accident.
Confections of a Closet Master Baker: One Woman’s Sweet Journey from Unhappy Hollywood Executive to Contented Country Baker
The notion that we should reproduce just because we can. Seems to me we should be able to articulate some proactive, deliberated reasons for bringing a child into the world. When women cite their biological clock, I wonder if they’ve thought that out.
Although the move dramatically increased my commute, Nick had a new job running the psych ward at the local hospital, and he needed to be close enough to troubleshoot at any hour. We therefore bought a charming lake house that I wouldn't have been able to afford on my own. This was the first time in our fifteen-year marriage when I was dependent on Nick's financial contribution. Until we moved to the lake house, we had been living in a midcentury rancho close to my college. The rancho had been a fixer, but I had been able to afford the entire mortgage and all our living expenses on my modest academic salary.
You have achieved true excellence, my friendly little sphincter! It took about a year before I stopped intoning St. Francis of Assisi's prayer every time I sat down on a toilet. The lion's share of the gross-out work would fall on him--changing dressings, cathing me, emptying my pee bag into a basin, disposing of my urine like a good old-fashioned chambermaid. "Many women appreciate a community to support them during this transition," she said earnestly. "Many women find that it is hard to adjust to a new phase in which their childbearing years are over."
He also refused to take his Lithium (despite his master's in clinical psychology), quit every job he could hold down in favor of his "art", and belittled her upbringing every chance he could get. The bipolar, bisexual hubby demanded that they do what he wanted to do, when he wanted to, while listening to the music he chose. Somehow, Janzen left and returned to this guy repeatedly. It is bizarre, then, that the book focused so much on tearing down her Mennonite family, all of whom are happily married and successful in their lives. Nevertheless, she left the church after going to a Mennonite college and hooked up with Mr. Wrong for the next 15 years. While visiting her parents, Janzen starts dating a great guy, but won't introduce him to her friends because he is Mennonite.
No comments:
Post a Comment