The Mennonite Historical Bulletin has compiled an “Essential Mennonite History Reading List” listing 41 books which
all Mennonites should read in order to be sufficiently knowledgeable about the many facets of our church history.
Daunting but fair enough. Confession: I’ve read 3 and dabbled in a fourth. (No one reads the entire Martyr’s Mirror. I mean, come on, the thing weighs about 600 pounds and has tiny, tiny type. Plus, the sermons — eh, not so interesting as narrative.) But I only read those three because I had to.
Because I like fiction better than nonfiction, I’m making up an UrbanMenno Essential Mennonite Reading List ™. Fiction is a good narrative correction to history sometimes and so good Mennonite writing is often what Mennonites are rather than what we would like to be. And I’ll start with these five.
- A Complicated Kindness: A Novel
by Miriam Toews. It didn’t win all those awards for nothing. Pretty near perfect.
- Peace Shall Destroy Many
by Rudy Weibe. The sui generis for Canadian Mennonite literature really.
- anything by Sandra Birdsell but maybe start with this
- My Harp Is Turned to Mourning
by Al Reimer. The first Mennonite fiction I ever read.
- Searching for Intruders: A Novel in Stories
by Stephan Raleigh Byler. We went to the same college but I don’t think I remember him at all. My loss.
And maybe not essential but surely one of the funniest books I have ever read: The Salvation of Yasch Siemens
5 responses so far ↓
1 jeremyy // Jun 3, 2008 at 5:50 pm
No one reads the entire Martyr’s Mirror. I mean, come on, the thing weighs about 600 pounds and has tiny, tiny type. Plus, the sermons — eh, not so interesting as narrative.
My grandfather paid a cousin of mine $50 to read the entire Martyr’s Mirror. Clearly, everything has a price in this world.
2 urbanmenno // Jun 3, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Hmmm … $50 doesn’t seem like very much really. But I’d probably do it for $100. Such is the sad state of reading today
3 Melissa // Jul 7, 2008 at 1:20 pm
The Martyr’s Mirror is online these days, and I think I’ve read close to half of it.
4 Melissa // Jul 7, 2008 at 1:24 pm
The link to the 41 books I HAVE to read or I’m a bad Mennonite doesn’t work, but I guess since I actually go to a Quaker meeting I’m a REALLY bad Mennonite.
5 mennomom // Jul 9, 2008 at 10:18 pm
I must comment on Rudy Wiebe’s “Peace Shall Destroy Many”. I remember very well when it was first published. The powers that be in the MB Church in Canada at the time were so……offended (maybe the truth hurts) that Wiebe promptly lost his job as the first editor of the national (Canadian) MB Herald. He then went on to bigger and better things on the Canadian literary scene.
Leave a Comment