Few topics garner more interest among Mennonites than Mennonite identity. Who or what is a Mennonite?

In On Mennonite/s Writing, Mennonite scholar Hildi Froese Tiessen addresses such questions as they relate to literature. The slash in the title acknowledges the ambiguity of identity by allowing “Mennonite/s” to function as both an adjective and a noun, she explains, while “writing” serves as both a noun and a verb. 

Tiessen coined “Mennonite/s Writing” as the title for a 1990 conference, and she says it “has become something of a brand or trademark denoting a field of literary activity centered around texts written by authors who are Mennonites.” Since that first one in Waterloo, Ont., there have been eight more such conferences.

In his introduction, editor ­Robert Zacharias quotes Conrad Grebel Uni­versity College’s announcement at Tiessen’s retirement declaring her “the founder and most significant sustainer of the study of Mennonite literature.” 

The book’s 17 essays display the scope of Tiessen’s commitment to understand and to propagate this literature. The first essay is her 1973 piece on the early fiction of Rudy Wiebe. Later, she got her doctorate and moved on to teaching, producing more essays on such topics as “The Role of Art and Literature in Mennonite Self-Understanding,” “Mennonite Writing and the Post-Colonial Condition,” “Mennonite Literature and Postmodernism” and “After Identity: Liberating the Mennonite Literary Text.”

While there is repetition in these essays, as Tiessen recounts the burgeoning Mennonite literature coming out of Manitoba in the 1980s — from such writers as Patrick Friesen, Sandra Birdsell, David Waltner-Toews, Armin Wiebe and Di Brandt — there is also plenty of unique material.

The question arises: What makes these writers Mennonite? Tiessen addresses this directly, though it won’t satisfy everyone. In a 2008 essay, she calls herself a “Mennonite Mennonite, or Mennonite in both consent and descent” — that is, religiously and culturally. The writers mentioned above, plus many others, she calls “secular Mennonites”: writers who were raised in a Mennonite context yet do not adhere to its religious beliefs or belong to a Mennonite church. They also tend to be critical of the Mennonite communities in which they were raised.

Tiessen is Canadian, and much of the literature she discusses comes out of Canada. She explains that the Canadian government’s policy on multi­culturalism “has encouraged and supported . . . a significant body of Mennonite writing.” And Mennonites are seen as a distinct ethnic group there, making up a large minority in a nation whose population is less than California’s.

She does turn to Mennonite writing in the United States, including poets Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Jeff Gundy and Jean Janzen, plus older writers Dallas Wiebe and Elmer Suderman. Here, however, Mennonites are not seen as a distinct cultural group or given multiculturalism grants by the government.

Much of the scholarly discussion of Mennonite identity has been done by theologians and historians. Tiessen argues, however, that “literature reveals a community to itself as no other field or discipline is likely to do.” Furthermore, “our writers reveal the dissonances inevitably perceptible in communities under the stress of constant change.” 

This book raises many questions. Is there such a thing as Mennonite literature or a Mennonite writer? Tiessen says yes. A Mennonite writer, she says, “knows from lived experience what it means to be a Mennonite, and Mennonite writing is writing such a writer produces.” 

Patrick Friesen, one of her secular Mennonites, abjures: “I’m not a Mennonite writer. I’m a Mennonite and I’m a writer, and you must differentiate.”

Tiessen acknowledges the complexity of the question: “The more the literature of Mennonites proliferates, the more diverse are the voices.” Yet, she concludes, Mennonite/s writing offers us “a rubric that we cannot not use.”

Sometimes the language can get difficult. For example, Tiessen refers to an assertion “that the writing of women and minorities tends to make use of structural ellipsis or distinctive cultural codes (including language) to subvert the constructed imperatives of the dominant culture and avoid being appropriated by it could richly inform our reading of texts by Mennonite writers.” But for the most part, these essays are accessible, and Tiessen’s love of literature and excitement for what’s ahead are contagious. 

Gordon Houser of North Newton, Kan., is a former editor of The Mennonite.