‘Mennonite in a Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home’ by Rhoda Janzen – Book Review

I have had an admiration for the Amish community for most of my life. A close kin to the Amish are those in the Mennonite community. Rhoda Janzen grew up in a Mennonite home, and she has written a memoir of her life - then and now – entitled ‘Mennonite in a Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home.’ 

Here is the synopsis of this poignant memoir:

Not long after Rhoda Janzen turned forty, her world turned upside down. It was bad enough that her husband of fifteen years left her for Bob, a guy he met on Gay.com, but that same week a car accident left her seriously injured. Needing a place to rest and pick up the pieces of her life, Rhoda packed her bags, crossed the country, and returned to her quirky Mennonite family’s home, where she was welcomed back with open arms and offbeat advice (Rhoda’s good-natured mother suggested she get over her heartbreak by dating her first cousin – he owned a tractor, see).

Written with wry humor and huge personality – and tackling faith, love, family, and aging – Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is an immensely moving memoir of healing, certain to touch anyone who has ever had to look homeward in order to move forward.

Here is the biography of this author:

Rhoda Janzen holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was the University of California Poet Laureate in 1994 and 1997. She is the author of Babel’s Stair, a collection of poems, and her poems have also appeared in Poetry, The Yale Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Southern Review. She teaches English and creative writing at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

Here is an interview with Rhoda discussing her book:

Rhoda has a humorous writing style. Here she is describing her father:

As adolescents, my sister Hannah and I were naturally anxious to see if we would turn out like our mother or our father. There was a lot at stake. Having endured a painfully uncool childhood, we realized that our genetic heritage positioned us on a precarious cusp. Dad was handsome but grouchy; Mom was plain but cheerful. Would we be able to pass muster in normal society, or would our Mennonite history forever doom us to outsider status?

My father, once the head of the North American Mennonite Conference for Canada and the United States, is the Mennonite equivalent of the pope, but in plaid shorts and black dress socks pulled up snugly along the calf. In the complex moral universe that is Mennonite adulthood, a Mennonite can be good-looking and still have no sartorial taste whatsoever. My father may actually be unaware that he is good-looking. He is a theologian who believes in a loving God, a servant heart, and a senior discount. Would God be pleased if we spent an unnecessary thirty-one cents at McDonald’s? I think not. 

At six feet five and classically handsome, Dad has an imposing stature that codes charismatic elocution and a sobering, insightful air of authority. I’ve considered the possibility that his wisdom and general seriousness make him seem handsomer than he actually is, but whatever the reason, Dad is one of those people to whom everyone listens, No matter who you are, you do not snooze through this man’s sermon. Even if you are an atheist, you find yourself nodding and thinking, Preach it, mister!

Well, not nodding. Maybe you imagine you’re nodding. But in this scenario you are in a Mennonite church, which means you sit very still and worship Jesus with all your heart, mind, and soul, only as if a snake had bitten you, and you are now in the last stages of paralysis. (pp. 2-3)

And here is her explanation for how her husband looked at life in their home:

In general, Nick’s policy was, if you hadn’t used it in a year, throw it out. We lived in homes with spare, ultramodern décor. Once he convinced me to furnish a coach house with nothing but a midcentury dining table and three perfect floor cushions. You know the junk drawer next to the phone? Ours contained a single museum pen and a pad of artisan paper on a Herman Miller tray. (p. 5)

Rhoda’s professional skills are unusual, to say the least. She took on a side project to supplement her income:

Because of the house situation, I had agreed to ghost-edit a scholarly monograph on sacred dramatic literature of the late fifteenth century. I was working on the second chapter, which was about Feo Belcari’s mechanical innovations in the staging of sacre rappresenatzione. If you are one of the folks who have never heard of Feo Belcari, I can fix that right up for you. You know those Christmas Eve church plays in which your white-blonde niece gets to play the angel Gabriel year after year because she has a startling strange paleness that looks, and I mean this in a good way, a little like an albino? And remember the moment when she appears in a white sheet in the baptistery, maybe singing “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” in a threadlike soprano? Feo Belcari was the guy in the late 1400s who figured out a way to have your niece/Gabriel come down on metal wires at the front of the church. That about sums it up, but the chapter I was editing was about fifty pages or so.

What I was doing was unusual – unusual, I mean, beyond the fact that there are maybe 16.2 people in the entire world who would like to know more about the sacred dramatic literature of the fifteenth century (Okay, I admit it: I’m one of them). Sometimes academics manage to wheedle their best friends into reading their manuscripts and making critical comments. It is not unreasonable that English professors are often targeted for this favor. If you also happen to be a grammarian who creepily knows how to diagram every sentence in the English language, there is an even more urgent demand for your services. I’m the sicko who can explain why a gerundive phrase must attach to a possessive adjective pronoun rather than an object pronoun. True, you wouldn’t want me at a party, but if the survival of the human race depended upon the successful parsing of the Constitution, you’d be knocking on my door, baby. (p. 17)

One advantage to growing up in an Amish home is to have the ability to cook up a storm:

I have been happily and busily cooking since age five, when I served up my first kettle of Borscht, made with boiled lettuce instead of cabbage (Say what you will, but it is easy to get confused in the face of such look-alike vegetables). The women in our family are the kinds of cooks whom you can’t kerfuffle. You need a dinner for ten an hour from now? No problem. We’ll rustle up homemade bread, noodles, gravy, sausage, whatever. Mennonite food has its delicious moments – more on that later – but our true gift lies in the ease with which we cook. Some cooks struggle with timing, with menu planning, with missing ingredients. Not us. Our seven side dishes always come up at exactly the same time, and if we have run out of something, which we rarely do, we have improvised a delicious substitution. We’re idiot savants when it comes to food preparation. You’ve heard of those developmentally delayed folks who can shout out what day of the week it was on May 16, 1804? That’s us, only we’re shouting, “Dinner’s ready!” (pp. 25-26)

As Rhoda grew up and experienced the world, she turned her back on her Mennonite upbringing. She found she had little in common with her brothers:

The gap between Aaron and me was marked by so much more than a divide between left and right brains, between science and the humanities. In fact, I don’t have much in common with either of my brothers. In college, they remained content with their opportunities in Mennonite circles. Aaron sang close harmonies in a madrigal group, his rich-timbered baritone blending like butter. Caleb played in state volleyball competitions with a Christian organization. They both went to Bible studies. They dated sincere gals who hairsprayed their bangs and went on missions trips. Big and easy in their exuberance, Aaron and Caleb coached, studied, prayed. But by then we had nothing in common.

I felt my little Mennonite college was holding me back from a serious literary education. And it was holding me back, in a manner of speaking. I found this out to my cost when in grad school I discovered the jaw-dropping level of my underexposure. At twenty all I wanted to do was read philosophy, feminism, and fashion. I was blind to all of the better lessons my solid little Mennonite college could have taught me, lessons about the value of community, of service, of wisdom rather than knowledge. (p. 135)

Rhoda discussed these differences with her mother, who had some wisdom of her own:

After they were gone, I asked my mother, “Don’t you think it’s weird that the boys are so much more conservative than you and Dad?”
“Oh, they’ll mellow over time,” said Mom. “When you’re young, faith is often a matter of rules. What you should do and shouldn’t do, that kind of thing. But as you get older, you realize that faith is really a matter of relationship – with God, with the people around you, with the members of your community.” (p. 137)

Despite her turning away from her church of origin, Rhoda still has faith:

I hadn’t ruled out the existence of God. I still don’t. In fact, I’m gonna come right out and admit that I believe in God. I have always loved the beautiful, mysterious power of the Bible, its lethal history, its toxic charm. I adored the idea of learning Hebrew and Greek. I longed for sustained study with other students who were also humbled by the power of creation, by the ineluctable search for meaning in a broken world. (p. 168)

Rhoda has certain expectations for dating; she speculated about whether or not she would be able to enjoy the company of the grandson of an acquaintance of her mother’s – a Mennonite fellow seventeen years her junior:

In my opinion, sexiness comes down to three things: chemistry, sense of humor, and treatment of waitstaff at restaurants. If the sparks don’t fly from the beginning, they never will. If he doesn’t get your sense of humor from the very first conversation, you’ll always be secretly looking for someone who does. And if a guy can’t see restaurant servers as real people, with needs and dreams and crappy jobs, then I don’t want to be with him, even if he just won the Pulitzer Prize.

With my exceptionally generous criteria for defining sexiness, you’d think that there would be a good chance that Soren Friesen could make the cut. Let’s face it, my standards were pretty low. The unsexy characteristics that usually attend Mennonite men would theoretically not be barriers to me. By my own confessed standard, I would have no problem dating a man with beefy pink skin, or chins that skipped like rocks on a pond – one, two, three, kerplunk. I could even fall for a guy whose wallet contained an expired ten-dollar coupon for a bad chain steakhouse, at which the server would refuse to honor the coupon because it was a good six years out of date. (p. 203)

Despite her misgivings about dating a Mennonite man, she did agree to a coffee date with Soren:

So my expectations were very low as I drove to the coffeehouse to meet the twenty-seven-year-old grandson of the granny who handed out bombshell books like candy. Soren was sitting at a small table, reading the New York Times Book Review. I knew it was he the moment I saw him, even though there were one or two other thirtyish men about. Soren had the straight sandy hair of our people, and a ruddy goatee to match. He looked cheerful and attractive as he stood to greet me. He was tall. And I liked his glasses. (p. 204)

This book has a section in the back entitled, 'Etc...' which contains an interview, as well as Mennonite recipes (the platz and borscht sound especially good), and discussion questions. I loved the answer to this question posed to Rhoda in the interview portion:

          Where are you on your spiritual journey today?    

So often we think of faith as the crutch of crisis; we turn to it only when our world bottoms out, as mine did when my husband left me. Weirdly, faith is becoming more important to me, not less. I’m still exploring issues of spiritually and theology, and I’m even regularly attending a church. Also, nobody’s twisting my arm! I’m often amazed that an English professor prefers nonfiction to new fiction… With a nod to Viktor Frankl, the books on my nightstand are all about man’s search for meaning. (Etc. p. 7)

I am glad to see that Rhoda is attending church again. I pray that she is involved with a congregation and is under the leadership of a pastor who can stimulate her intellect while still nourishing her soul.

When I heard the title of this book, I knew I wanted to read it! Although it is outside of the normal bounds of books I have read of late, I enjoyed it thoroughly nonetheless. Dr. Janzen has an amazing ways with words, and I am encouraged to see that she is – slowly – returning to the faith of her childhood. I pray that Jesus manifests Himself to her in a mighty way.

You can order this book here.

This book was published by Henry Holt and Company and provided by them for review purposes.

‘Muffins and Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy - if Disorderly- Life’ by Suzanne Beecher – Book Review

One of my favorite book genres is the memoir. And one of my favorite daily emails to receive is the Zondervan Breakfast Club email from Suzanne Beecher. When I discovered Suzanne had a book coming out, I knew it was a must-read for me!

Here is the synopsis of ‘Muffins and Mayhem: Recipes for a Happy -if Disorderly - Life’:

In Muffins and Mayhem, Suzanne Beecher, creator of the online book club, DearReader.com, combines her life story with 30 of her favorite recipes. With striking candor, Suzanne takes readers on a journey from her lowest moments to her greatest joys and personal victories. Suzanne writes about personal successes and failures and what each taught her about life, love, and her capacity to persevere.

Scattered throughout Suzanne’s memoir are favorite recipes, and each is accompanied by a personal anecdote. Suzanne believes that recipes are more than just a mix of ingredients: they’re food for the soul, and she doesn’t leave readers hungry. From humorous tales about avoiding her mother’s liver dishes as a child (and Mom’s Thanksgiving meals as an adult!) to a reverent account of how a childhood hero touched her life through frosted meat loaf, Suzanne’s food-filled memoir warms the heart as well as fills the stomach.

 Gathering thirty wonderful recipes and the memories surrounded them, Suzanne shows us the author as a child who learned to cook when she was just eight years old while singing backup to the Monkees, a woman who struggled with difficult parents, a hardworking mom who loved making cookies for her kids, a recovering addict, and a writer who has learned much along the way by remembering that love is the most important thing in life.

This beautifully written celebration of life, friends, and family will nourish Suzanne’s numerous fans and those who have yet to discover her simple, homespun magic.

Here is Suzanne’s biography:

Suzanne Beecher has owned a restaurant, founded and published a business magazine, founded a non-profit program to feed the homeless and home-schooled her youngest son. She writes a daily column at DearReader.com and designs book clubs for publishers, booksellers, and libraries across the country. She lives with her husband, Bob, in Sarasota, Florida.

Here is the engaging author explaining how to make her Whoops Banana Bread:

Suzanne’s childhood did not include the warm memories that she wishes she had to dwell on; it affected her adult behavior:

So I accepted my fate as an adult deprived of a childhood. Or at the very least an adult deprived of those warm and fuzzy memories I should have been able to tap into when I wanted to go back home in my mind. But then it occurred to me that I’d always been ambivalent about going home, anyway – not only in my mind, but in my car, too. At least it seemed that way. Whenever I planned a trip to see my parents, I’d get sick. I’m not kidding! Two or three days before I was supposed to leave, an illness would consume me: wheezing, sneezing, that all-over crummy feeling. Nothing serious, a twenty-four-hour virus sort of thing – but just enough “miserable” so I’d have to cancel my trip. My recovery period was amazing. And eventually I realized there was a pattern: As soon as the “magic hour” had passed, and it was too late to go, no hope of getting back home in time for a weekend visit, I was cured. (p. xi)

One bright memory in her childhood was a friend’s mother, Mrs. Creswick:

Years ago I’m sure Mrs. Creswick thought she was simply giving me a recipe for meat loaf, and for a long time that’s what I thought, too. But suddenly it was all so clear – the things that make me what I am today, the things I really like about myself, they all came from growing up in Cuba City [Wisconsin]. Remember the girl who was ambivalent about going home? Mrs. Creswick’s meat loaf finally showed her the way.

So if a plate of cherry tomatoes and cottage cheese, and a Frosted Meat Loaf recipe could leave such a big impression on my heart, maybe there were other little things in my life I was overlooking?

I’m a daily columnist who writes about life, and after I wrote the story about Mrs. Creswick’s Meat Loaf the tone of my columns changed. I guess what really happened is I wasn’t afraid to open my heart and let readers see the real me. Now I freely write about my feelings I wrestle with every day – my father’s final farewell apology, embarrassing moments like the day I was trying to make a big impression but suddenly realized a lint roller was stuck to my behind, trapping Mighty Roach in the middle of the night, and how I couldn’t get back in the groove after my mother died even though we’d never been close. (p. xii)

Even as a little girl, Suzanne had a certain flair:

I’d always get the work done, at least most of the time. But the “getting-it-done” didn’t start until about an hour and a half before my parents came home for lunch, because I’d get sidetracked by other important things. Like lip-syncing with the Monkees.

          Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees

          And people say we monkey around.

A bottle of Pledge was my microphone and a pair of my mother’s heels gave me the onstage look. I’d draw the curtains over the big picture window in our living room – I wasn’t ready for an audience yet – then I’d slide back the cover of our dark wooden console stereo, put the Monkees’ 33 1/3 LP on the changer, click the switch, and when the needle dropped the magic would begin. (p. 10)

Suzanne’s life was a little off-kilter early on:

For longer than I care to admit, I walked around with loose wires in my brain. While other teenagers were applying to colleges and planning their futures, I was getting drunk and looking for love in all the wrong places. Some people were quick to blame my parents; instead I used to blame myself. The truth is, Mom and Dad and I were each doing the best we knew how to do. Yes, parents are supposed to know the way, but my parents missed the day they passed out the informational brochure about How to Love and Raise a Well-Adjusted Child (I’m pretty sure their parents were absent that day, too). Mom and Dad didn’t intentionally fall down on the job; they simply couldn’t give me what they’d never experienced themselves. If they could have freely let go of their love and still survived, I believe they would have.

So where did that leave me? Trying to figure out how to write a successful recipe for my life, a better recipe than the one my parents were using. Common sense told me when you’re trying to figure out how to do something better than before, you need to take a closer look at before. “Learn from your mistakes,” advises the old adage, and eventually I did write a new recipe for my life, but it sure was rough going for a while. People seem to be amazed when I find the courage to tell them about the things I did when I was young – young, maybe, but old enough to know better. Some perils are embarrassing and downright insane, even I shake my head in amazement. What was I thinking? (pp. 27-28)

I loved Suzanne’s description of the first encounter with her husband, Bob:

I was impressed – not only was this guy talented, he owned two businesses, took full-time responsibility for his children – and he was a handsome man. Gorgeous, really, but I could only dream. This responsible clean-cut guy was way out of my league.

“But love is blind, and lovers cannot see,” wrote Shakespeare, which must account for Bob’s impression of me the first day we met: “I was a single parent, working around the clock trying to run two businesses, couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a date, or even left my house except to go to the grocery store – and there you were. A goddess walking into my office asking for help. It was love at first sight. You were a smart girl – I knew it right away – and you were hot!” (p. 39)

Suzanne has always questioned her abilities, and the boogeyman (I would interpret that as Satan) is happy to come alongside to question herself:

Well, I’m here to tell you (and him) the subject is alive and well in my life. Questioning my abilities, talking myself out of feeling like a loser, these are conversations I know by heart – both sides. The boogeyman doesn’t even have to actually say anything to taunt me, I do that job myself. Suzanne, you’re not talented, you’re a big loser, people think you’re strange, crowds of people are snickering behind your back, every other writer is in, but you’re out. The list could go on for hours and, unfortunately, some days it does, until even I have had enough – for heaven’s sake, Suzanne, give it a rest. I get upset and angry with myself – and what’s when the “magic” happens. Because in my weakness I find my strength. Get me angry and I come out fighting. Not fisticuffs, but with just enough feistiness to protect my feeling and in the process, I decide I’ll show ‘em I can accomplish things, and so I do. (p. 69)

Boy, can I relate to that paragraph!

God truly blessed Bob and Suzanne with each other:

My husband says he was put here on earth to take care of me. Now how could a woman possibly argue with that kind of logic?

Our marriage must be for keeps because every day it just keeps getting better and better, even after being married for thirty-two years and working together every single day. But working together harmoniously wasn’t something that came about naturally. Shortly after we were married, we went several times to see a therapist so we could learn how to work together. “Learning” requires several sessions because it took me a while to recognize and to finally ‘fess up to the fact that I think my way of doing things is the right way. (And just between you and me – most of the time it is! I’m smiling, just kidding.) (p. 114)

I love this life lesson:

I’ve always thought my job, my purpose here on earth, certainly must be something more dramatic than simply loving and taking care of the people around me. So I’ve strived to be clever, artistic, and talented in business. But as I sit here at four in the morning looking around the room and looking at my grandson, I realize I’ve been looking at life all wrong. It’s not complicated, there’s nothing to prove. My mother was right. It’s really very simple. What’s really important is love. (p. 218)

And this one:

Writing has taught me that simpler is better. That it easy, slow down, Suzanne, and simply say what’s on your mind. Maybe I should use impressive words, sonorous adjectives, or make the sentences complex. But writing isn’t really any different from other things in life. Too much eye shadow – what was I thinking? The first Dove Bar tasted divine, so I ate another – my stomach rebelled. The man at the deli thought he was doing me a favor when he put a little bit more of everything on my sandwich, but it was too much. (p. 226)

Interspersed throughout this book are tasty recipes, including the Whoops Banana Bread, Funeral Cake with Buttercream Frosting, Mrs. Creswick’s Frosted Meat Loaf, Porcupine Meatballs, and, of course, Suzanne’s Chocolate-Chip Cookies. I am not the cook in the family (God blessed me with Fred, who loves to cook), but these look really easy and tasty – too hard to resist!

This book was everything I expected – and more! You can tell Suzanne is a wonderful person; she’s someone you’d love to hang out with at Starbucks – with the hopes that she brings her famous chocolate chip cookies with her! She is genuine and real, and her number one aim is to make people feel comfortable. I really enjoy her daily emails on life and love, and I really appreciated learning more about her life by reading this fun and entertaining book.

You can order this book here.

The Advanced Reader Copy of this book was published by Touchstone Books, a Simon & Schuster Publishers imprint and provided by Meryl L. Moss Media Relations for review purposes. The page numbers included in this review are from the Advanced Reader Copy, and may be different from those in the final edition.