memoir

Refugee – A Memoir Retold Agnes Sawatsky Pauls as told to Helen Rose Pauls Review by Arisnel Mesidor What is the subject? Refugee: A Memoir Retold by Helen Rose Pauls…

Title: To and from Nowhere
Author: Hedy Leonora Martens
This sequel to the story of Greta Martens recorded in Favoured Among Women is even more interesting than the first volume.

Title: At Home in Exile: Finding Jesus among My Ancestors & Refugee Neighbors
Author: Russell Jeung

At Home in Exile is a “spiritual memoir” about incarnational mission.

Branch: A Memoir with Pictures
Author: John L. Ruth
“The story is an inner rainbow, a weaving of words and imagination and visualization,…a marriage of the head and heart,” writes Elaine M. Ward in The Art of Storytelling. Stories can “heal, educate, inspire, motivate, transform, make meaning, entertain and build relationships.”

Laughter is Sacred Space: The Not-So-Typical Journey of a Mennonite Actor
Author: Ted Swartz
Not only the journey, but the telling itself of Ted Swartz’s biography Laughter is Sacred Space is “not-so-typical.” A Mennonite actor, creator and co-creator of plays for more than 20 years, Swartz formats his personal account according to the five-act structure of storytelling: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. To dispel confusion for those not familiar with script formats, Ted provides a guide to the layout of the book following the foreword, called “Wait, Who’s Talking Now?!”

Red Quarter Moon: A Search for Family in the Shadow of Stalin
Author: Anne Konrad
Part memoir, part history, and part historiography, Red Quarter Moon details Anne Konrad’s search for Mennonite relatives who remained in Russia through the tumultuous years of revolution, civil war, as well as the rise and fall of the USSR. Her own parents fled in 1929; the author undertakes to find out what happened to family members who remained and subsequently disappeared or were cut off from contact with relatives abroad.

Does This Church Make Me Look Fat? A Mennonite Finds Faith, Meets Mr. Right, and Solves Her Lady Problems
Author: Rhoda Janzen
Those who pick up Rhoda Janzen’s latest memoir will undoubtedly find the book as warm and funny as the title sounds. It’s written in the same irreverent, conversational style as her previous bestseller, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Readers with strong denominational roots will once again find themselves inwardly howling (or wincing!) at the frequent, nostalgic references. However, it would be a mistake to read too much personal insecurity into the “fat” question.

Entering the Wild: Essays on faith and writing
Author: Jean Janzen
Fans of Jean Janzen, the celebrated Mennonite poet, will be intrigued by her new memoir, Entering the Wild. Janzen’s book chronicles her life in a diverse collection of personal essays….

Though the eyes of a Third Culture Kid Curry, Corduroy and the Call Gwendolyn Hiebert Schroth Missionary autobiographies are abundant; what sets apart Curry, Corduroy and the Call by Gwendolyn…

You Never Gave Me a Name: One Mennonite Woman’s StoryAuthor: Katie Funk WiebeYou Never Gave Me a Name: One Mennonite Woman’s Story is Katie Funk Wiebe’s memoir of growth and change over eight decades. It describes the evolution of a theologian, a woman, and a denomination.

When Katie Funk Wiebe stepped off the train to attend Mennonite Brethren Bible College in 1945, it was but the next step in a journey of discovery begun with her childhood in Blaine Lake, Sask. Many more steps would follow, through marriage, being widowed, raising four children alone, and her work as professor and well-known writer and speaker.