BOOK REVIEW: Mennonite In A Little Black Dress

Rhoda Janzen is probably best known as a poet. She was the University of California Poet Laureate in 1994 and 1997 and has previously published several collections of poetry. After being asked so many times about growing up Mennonite and leaving that community for the sophisticated world of art and academia, she decided to write her memoirs. The result is MENNONITE IN A LITTLE BLACK DRESS.

Rhoda had turned her back on the Mennonite community, married an atheist, and became a college professor. Two decades later, while recovering from a bad automobile accident, her husband of fifteen years has left her for a guy named Bob, whom he met on Gay.com. Rhoda feels that it is time to go home.

Home is a conservative Mennonite family. Her father is an internationally known speaker for the Mennonites and her mother, a nurse, has the practical answers to help Rhoda recover. Her most often suggested advise is for Rhoda to marry her first cousin. He has a tractor and would be a good catch.

The book was very informative about the Mennonite life style. Rhoda had grown up without dancing, drinking alcohol, radios, eight-track tapes, Barbies, and unsupervised television. She had been surrounded by love, laughter, and tradition that now she has come to appreciate these things as well as having family to support her.

The book is humorous at times. Rhoda makes light of her present problems, especially the ex-husband. As with all of us, what was embarrassing in our teens can be funny to look back on. Most of the humor comes from the mother’s ability to bring inappropriate subjects into conversations. As a nurse, Rhoda's mother found nothing wrong with talking about pus at the dinner table while the family ate their mashed potatoes.

Even though this book gave me a better understanding of the Mennonites and I am not sorry that I read it, I did not like it. It was a #1 bestseller and the reviews promised a laugh out loud book. I found the humor to be forced and Rhoda a little hard to take. At times I felt that she was using four letter words just to show us how far she had moved from her strict religious past. Memoirs are tricky; the author walks a fine line between telling us the facts and sounding egotistical or whiney. Rhoda was the latter.