#CrazyforCanLit: These are OUR stories

This book echoes my own grandmother’s experiences about living in Russia as a teenager in the same time period, and gave me a richer understanding of the stoic but unwavering religious faith of my Mennonite ancestors. In recent days, I have thought a lot about these refugee ancestors of mine, who were actually banned from immigrating to Canada between 1919 and 1922, along with Doukhobors and Hutterites, due to their alarming religious views and tendency to not assimilate to the greater Canadian culture. The parallels with current political situations are impossible to ignore, and I credit books like The Russländer with strengthening my empathy towards our modern day refugees of war, because it reminds me that this too is my own history. 

While Sandra Birdsell’s books have helped me understand how my past helps to mold my present political views, many of Miriam Toews‘ books relate to me on a more direct level. Toews grew up in the same southern Manitoba town that I did, and her description of East Village in the Giller-nominated and Governor General’s Literary Award-winning book, A Complicated Kindness, describes the Steinbach of my childhood to a T. While my own family wasn’t as repressive as Nomi’s, I still feel a kinship to a character who is stuck in her small home town, stuck in a religious ethnic identity that she doesn’t identify with, and stuck in her own rebellious adolescent mind. I feel like I could have easily written this quote when I was a snarky and self-absorbed teenager:

We’re Mennonites. After Dukhobors who show up naked in court we are the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager…. Imagine the least well-adjusted kid in your school starting a breakaway clique of people whose manifesto includes a ban on the media, dancing, smoking , temperate climates, movies, drinking, rock’n’roll, having sex for fun, swimming, makeup, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities, or staying up past nine o’clock. That was Menno all over. Thanks a lot, Menno.