May the Literature Professor Gods Forgive Me

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home, Rhoda Janzen

Not really sure what I expected from this book, but whatever it was, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress did not deliver. It has been a few days since I finished it, and I let myself sit back and think before sitting down to write this post. I was trying to figure out what I thought, what my  overall impression is, what I wanted to say. The best I have been able to come up with is… Mehh.

Rhoda Janzen is a literature professor, and maybe that is why I am having such a hard time admitting that I didn’t really love this book. I didn’t hate it either. It was just sort of bland. And kind of unorganized. I feel really  guilty saying these things. Partly because I come from the if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all school of thought. (at least in public. to people’s faces) But mostly because I feel like I am criticizing a professor, and I am a little queasy telling  someone of authority (a professor. a published author.) that I think her book is a little bit lame.

This is a memoir of Janzen’s return to the Mennonite community she grew up in after a nasty divorce and even nastier car accident. As she heals, both physically and emotionally, she comes to appreciate the Mennonite community she ran from when she was a kid. It is part coming home story, part reflection on a failed marriage, part documentary and history lesson. And part Lifetime movie.

Maybe that’s the root of my problem with it; there are too many parts. Janzen goes from talking about the embarrassment of the long skirts she had to wear as a girl to her ex husband’s mental instability to baking bread all in  the span of a few pages and I was left feeling confused and wondering what one had to do with the other.

Have you ever had one of those conversations that starts with mention of a movie you just saw and all of a sudden you find yourself talking about the shoes you had when you were 13? Janzen’s style is like that, but instead of feeling like I was having a long interesting conversation with an old friend, it was more like a conversation with a stranger in a loud bar where you miss every fourth word and pretend you know what they are talking about.  I got what Jenzen was talking about; I was just not that interested. 

May the literature professor gods forgive me.