What Mennonite girls are good for / Jennifer Sears.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sears, Jennifer, 1968- Author.

Series:

John Simmons short fiction award

Iowa short fiction award

Language:

English

Genre:

short stories.

Short stories.

Physical Description:

147 pages ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, [2025]

Summary:

"Description: In these eleven stories, Ruthie, a Mennonite minister's daughter, moves from a youthful, exuberant understanding of her family's faith toward religious doubt and questioning. In "Blessed are the Children Who Know Not to Tell," set in a missionary school in Asuncion, Paraguay, Ruthie senses the disparity between the world that is and the world she's been promised and learns how power and abuse can be confused for duty and love. The section "Sins and Symbols," opens when Ruthie poses for a photographer in former chapel in southern California where her father pursues a theology degree. Transformed by the sight of an emaciated Christ on a forgotten crucifix, Ruthie's desire to rid herself of all flesh leads her to a self-destructive belief system of her own at the age when many join the church. The stories in "Faith is Just Another Sorrow," show Ruthie stumbling, comically at times, as she navigates life with and without the rules and values in which she's been raised to live. In the title story, Ruthie confronts the privileges, stereotypes, and expectations embedded in her Mennonite experience and, in a pivotal moment, finds unexpected resonance with her father's deep commitment to social justice through his work with Central American asylum seekers with the Sanctuary Movement. Ruthie's search for personal truth, always physical, often sexual, leads her from missionary outposts in Paraguay and Brazil, midwestern Mennonite towns in northern Indiana and central Kansas, into airports, truck stops and motels, vandalized Native American ruins, women's healthcare clinics, pacifist prairie towns disrupted by trains transporting weapons and vehicles from arms manufacturers, and lingerie shops on the secular, melancholy east coast. Together, these stories consider how faith and identity intertwine, the cost of leaving one's community and cultural heritage, and how choices made complicate the longing for return"-- Provided by publisher.

Other Format:

Online version Sears, Jennifer, 1968- What Mennonite girls are good for

ISBN:

9781685970499

1685970494

OCLC:

1515016440