Buch, Englisch, 168 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 218 mm, Gewicht: 318 g
A Memoir of Mennonite Girlhood
Buch, Englisch, 168 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 218 mm, Gewicht: 318 g
Reihe: Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiog
ISBN: 978-0-299-34040-7
Verlag: University of Wisconsin Press
Plain tells the story of Mary Alice Hostetter’s journey to define an authentic self amid a rigid religious upbringing in a Mennonite farm family. Although endowed with a personality “prone toward questioning and challenging,” the young Mary Alice at first wants nothing more than to be a good girl, to do her share, and—alongside her eleven siblings—to work her family’s Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, farm. She feels fortunate to have been born into a religion where, as the familiar hymn states, she is “safe in the arms of Jesus.” As an adolescent, that keen desire for belonging becomes focused on her worldly peers, even though she knows that Mennonites consider themselves a people apart. Eventually she leaves behind the fields and fences of her youth, thinking she will finally be able to grow beyond the prohibitions of her church. Discovering and accepting her sexuality, she once again finds herself apart, on the outside of family, community, and societal norms.
This quietly powerful memoir of longing and acceptance casts a humanizing eye on a little-understood American religious tradition and a woman’s striving to grow within and beyond it.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
Weitere Infos & Material
- Prologue
- The Girl at the Market
- Part One
- Hot Lard
- Class Pictures
- Once Upon a Time
- Making Soup
- Yearnings
- Wrestling with Peace
- Part Two
- Simple Pleasure
- Billy Graham’s Necktie
- Cleansed at Crystal Flow
- On Foot-Washing Sunday
- One of the Plain Girls
- Considering Lilies of the Field
- It’s Only Fair
- Leaving Home
- Part Three
- Making It to the Main Line
- Among the Right People
- Where Do I Fit?
Zeit und Raum
- The Coming-Out Letters
- Epilogue
- Elegy to the Farm Where I Grew Up
- Acknowledgments
