Tag Archives: Dora Dueck

Ten Sentences about Mennonite/s Writing Ten

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  1. On the flight home from Winnipeg to Vancouver, I scan my notes and discover they’re so pathetically cryptic, they’ll be useless for saying anything meaningful about the conference sessions.
  2. Nevertheless, I can state the facts: this was # 10 in a series of conferences called Mennonite/s Writing, held every 3 years or so, and this time at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, Manitoba, June 13-15, under the theme “Words at Work and Play.”
  3. The conference happened against the news of nearly 300 dead in an Air India crash, Israel attacking Iran, ongoing National Guard/ICE craziness in Los Angeles, yet here we were, maybe 110 (?) of us, thinking and talking about writing, for in her keynote, Julia Spicher Kasdorf said her response to global concerns is to become more local, and these days, this was our local.
  4. I really enjoyed the conference — the sessions and keynotes of course, but also the collegiality, the many conversations with old and new friends, a happy sense of belonging because even though I don’t label myself a “Mennonite writer” (what does that actually mean, never mind these regular gatherings trying to figure it out) I still know that in some real way this is my tribe and besides, they’ll have me, which is always a happy and satisfying thing.
  5. The keynotes were highlights: Magdalene Redekop in an almost poetical trail of insights and juxtapositions on “translation” — a task we all take up in our lives — and David Waltner-Toews tackling “the meaning of everything” via science, that is, each of us “an unstable patchwork at our very core” yet interconnected, and Julia Spicher Kasdorf ruminating on Mennonite identity, noting “identity politics reduces complexity” and “identity work can wear a body out” yet calling us — stirringly — to commit to writing as practice and conversation.
  6. I very rarely — honestly — notice what people are wearing, though there were several memorable, if minor, exceptions this time, for I glimpsed a well-known writer in his pyjamas in the residence hallway and I think they were blue and white, and Di Brandt wore a garland of (cloth?) red flowers and leaves on her head during her presentation, and my longtime friend Sarah Klassen looked classy in a neat, belted teal dress, but I do notice space and felt the conference metaphorically balanced by having parts in the aged, wood-toned ambience of the Great Hall and its connecting corridors and other parts in the newish light-filled Marpeck Commons.
  7. Most of the sessions ran concurrently with others, which meant that every choice meant missing something else, but the personal program I selected began wonderfully with David Elias on his grandfather’s brother and Elsie K. Neufeld on her work as a personal historian and Linda Umble on reading Mennonite texts, and ended as wonderfully Sunday morning with three poets — Jeff Gundy, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Ann Hostetler — reading their work, and in between I presented too (“Thinking about Oneself: Desire and Discovery in the Personal Essay and Memoir”) alongside Mary Ann Loewen who gave a memoir talk about herself and her granddaughter, both of which went well, we thought, and provoked some good discussion..
  8. A good number of younger people attended, and some presented, as in a session I attended featuring readings by Joelle Kidd, James Bergman, and Geoff Martin (whom I had “met” before, in a manner of speaking, when essays we’d written sat side-by-side in The New Quarterly — his was the winning one!) and it was great to hear new and younger voices in the mix.
  9. On the Thursday evening before the conference began, In Search of a Mennonite Imagination, edited by Robert Zacharias, containing key texts in Mennonite literary criticism, was launched at McNally Robinson Booksellers and I bought it, all 700+ significant pages of it, and later some other books besides, not as many as I may have wished but more than I could carry in my full backpack, but then a friend who lives in the next town over kindly offered to transport some of them, including the massive tome, in his luggage.
  10. The conference included an optional “literary tour” of Steinbach, which I selected to do, and it was interesting to see places associated with writers such as Miriam Toews and Patrick Friesen and ended with a delicious faspa at the Mennonite museum, where my final “Mennonite” sight of the weekend was a sculpture of the famous Dirk Willems story, which makes me wonder — in terms of two words Julia Spicher Kasdorf set against each other —  whether it represented, and could be told, as “continuity” rather than “rupture.” 

Always Something to Miss

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Feeling a little sad this morning, as it’s the last day of my month in Toronto. It’s been a wonderful month, so quickly — it seems — gone! When I came I raked leaves, which I enjoyed thoroughly, no longer in possession of a yard myself, and since then it’s cooled and even snowed (though the snow was rained away) and Christmas decorations now adorn the neighbourhood.

There have been special events (birthdays and the musical “Come from Away”) and ordinary ones, memorable day by day. Also, because this was a longer visit, I was able to get in a few meet-ups with other people: professor emeritus and writer Magdalene Redekop (Making Believe); friends from Winnipeg days, now in St. Catherines, the wise and wonderful Doug and Annie Schulz; avid reader (and supporter of writers via her blog “Pickle Me This” and 49th Shelf) and writer Kerry Clare. Nourishing conversations, all of them, of the kind that make one paradoxically hungry for more!IMG_5188

First on the agenda when I get home will be to put up the tree and festoon my own apartment with Christmasy matter, as well as re-connect with my Tsawwassen family (including attending a performance of Handel’s Messiah with oldest granddaughter) and my local friends. This is lovely anticipation. But I will miss my Toronto family a lot, and this place too.

“There is always something to miss,” says Sarah in Sarah, Plain and Tall, one of the books I read to the two youngest here, “no matter where you are.” Always, sadly and true, because “where you are” is one place at a time.

Where I Am Now

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Since the basement suite at my Toronto son’s home is currently between renters, he and my daughter-in-law and I decided this would be a perfect time for me to come and stay longer than my usual visits. I left Vancouver yesterday morning and arrived in the evening to a warm welcome. I’ll be here a month.

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On the flight I watched a movie: Young Woman and the Sea, based on the true story of Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel. I found myself choking up at numerous points, which surprised me, because although it’s well done and inspiring, it’s also a fairly predictable triumph-over-adversity narrative. Why was my emotional skin so thin that every little thing in the movie threatened to puncture it?

I discerned that perhaps even more than I’d been aware of, I was discouraged by the recent U.S. election, especially in matters concerning women. It felt as if the formidable challenges Trudy Ederle faced as a female in sports in the 1920s were standing in for the resurgence of an ugly cultural misogyny.

Perhaps the anticipation of inhabiting the exact space Helmut and I did more than eight years ago was part of it too. After we packed our Winnipeg belongings into a storage pod, spring 2016, we came to Toronto for two-plus months, living in the basement. Helmut helped son Peter wall off the area for the current two-room apartment. My sister, whose husband died several years before mine, once observed, “You get used to it.” And it’s true, eventually you do. It would actually be awful if one didn’t get used to things. Nevertheless, anticipation of a return to the space we (and then I) had not been in again since 2016 (because it was renter-occupied) seemed to be triggering sad nostalgia.

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The Toronto house I’m in. (By Natalie Czerwinski.)

Once inside it, however, I was slightly disoriented and realized that the space had subtly altered in my memory. I have a strong sense of places I’ve lived, but obviously it’s far from infallible. As I settled into the specifics of the present — one twin bed in the room, not two squished together, and the addition of a desk and chair and some other furniture — the memories became clearer and re-arranged themselves, and I was happy about them and also ready to enjoy being here with the children and three granddaughters — semi-independent but connected — and to work on a couple of small writing projects as well as help along in whatever ways I can. My emotional skin feels thicker; there’s fresh courage in this space.