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The Body and the Book
Writing from a Mennonite Life: Essays and Poems
230 pages | 34 illustrations | 6 x 9 | 2009
Cloth edition is not available
ISBN 978-0-271-03544-4 | paper: $24.95 sh
Paperback edition due in May
Now in paperback, Julia Kasdorf's The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life investigates the often difficult relationships among writing, community, and belief. The book examines aspects of Mennonite life from the perspective of family stories and historical documentation as well as from the author's own experiences. This collection of ten essays—presented in relation to poems as well as photographs and other illustrations—explores a variety of themes, including gender, community, silence, place, identity, and the body.
Divided into distinct sections, the book tries to reconcile Kasdorf’s profession with the practical wisdom and habitual silence of her Mennonite heritage. Essays in the first section delve into her familial influences in the Old Amish settlement where her parents grew up. The second section focuses on the obstacles she faces as a woman writing from a traditional and ethnic religious background. Each essay in the third section uses a historical episode as an occasion to explore the complex interconnections among voice, body, gender, and religious tradition. And, finally, the last section demonstrates how writing enables an author to integrate disparate experiences and memories. Even as she strives to create herself as an individual, she cannot fully separate from the Mennonite heritage that has shaped her.
Julia Spicher Kasdorf was born in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, and is the author of two collections of poems: Sleeping Preacher, published in 1992, and Eve’s Striptease, published in 1998. She published the biography Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American in 2002, and with Joshuah Brown edited Yoder’s 1940 classic, Rosanna of the Amish, which appeared in 2008. In 2007, she published a poetry anthology titled Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn, which she edited with Michael Tyrell.
Contents
Preface to the 2009 Edition
Preface and Acknowledgments
I. A Place to Begin
1. Mountains and Valleys
2. Tracking the Mullein, or Portrait of a Mennonite Muse
3. When the Stranger Is an Angel
II. Writing Home
4. Bringing Home the Work
5. Preacher's Striptease
6. Bodies and Boundaries
III. The Witness a Body Bears
7. Work and Hope
8. Marilyn, H. S. Bender, and Me
9. The Gothic Tale of Lucy Hochstetler and the Temptation of Literary Authority
IV. Conclusion
10. Writing like a Mennonite
Afterword
Notes