Books – Mennonite Studies

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  Hidden Worlds

  Revisiting the Mennonite Migrants of the 1870s

  Royden Loewen (Author)

  In the 1870s, approximately 18,000 Mennonites migrated from the southern steppes of Imperial Russia (present-day Ukraine) to the North American grasslands. Their adaptation to the New World required new concepts of social boundary and community, new strategies of land ownership and legacy, new associations, and new ways of interacting with markets. In Hidden Worlds, historian Royden Loewen illuminates some of these adaptations, which have been largely overshadowed by an emphasis on institutional history, or whose sources have only recently been revealed.

  Published November 2001 | Ethnic Studies, History, Immigration, Mennonite Studies

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  From the Inside Out

  The Rural Worlds of Mennonite Diarists

  Royden Loewen (Author)

  Historian Royden Loewen has brought together selections from diaries kept by 21 Mennonites in Canada between 1863 and 1929, some translated from German for the first time. By skillfully comparing and contrasting a wide cross-section of lives, Loewen shows how these diaries often turn the hidden contours of household and community “inside out.”

  Published October 1999 | Ethnic Studies, History, Mennonite Studies, Translation

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  In Her Own Voice

  Childbirth Stories from Mennonite Women

  Katherine Martens (Author)

  Winnipeg writer Katherine Martens interviewed 26 women from the Mennonite community in southern Manitoba, ranging in age from 22 to 88 years old. In the privacy of their kitchens and parlours, over sociable cups of tea, they share with Martens their private fears and joys about what was often seen as a rite of passage into responsible adulthood, and they recalled that childbirth could be a difficult and, at times, traumatic event, but it could also be a radiant and spiritual experience.

  Published May 1997 | Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, Mennonite Studies, Women’s Studies

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  Wild Mother Dancing

  Maternal Narrative in Canadian Literature

  Di Brandt (Author)

  Wild Mother Dancing challenges the historical absence of the mother, who, as subject and character, has been repeatedly suppressed and edited out of the literary canon. In her search for sources for telling the new (or old, forbidden story) against a tradition of narrative absence, Brandt turns to Canadian fiction representing a varety of cultural traditions — Margaret Laurence, Daphne Marlatt, Jovette Marchessault, Joy Kogawa, Sky Lee — and a collection of oral interviews about childbirth told by Mennonite women.

  Published September 1993 | Gender Studies, Literary Criticism, Mennonite Studies, Oral History & Storytelling, Women’s Studies

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  Singing Mennonite

  Low German Songs Among the Mennonites

  Doreen Helen Klassen (Author)

  In this pioneering book, Doreen Helen Klassen explores a collection of Mennonite Low German songs and rhymes.

  Published January 1989 | Ethnic Studies, History, Mennonite Studies, Music, Religion