Moving In With Mom, Dad and God

In her uproarious memoir, Rhoda Janzen recounts moving back in with her conservative Mennonite parents, and getting reacquainted with borscht, public prayer, and being set up with her cousins.

In her early 40s, Rhoda Janzen hit what can be generously called a rough patch. First, she was diagnosed with an illness whose treatment involved a hysterectomy. Then, a surgeon’s error resulted in her being the proud owner of a pee bag, which she took to carrying in an aqua leather tote.

Luckily, her husband of 15 years, Nick, was a capable nurse and, six weeks later, her health issues and emotional upheaval had come to an end—or so she thought. Nick soon left her for a guy he met on Gay.com. Then, that very same week, she got into a car accident on a snowy road and was left with an assortment of broken bones.

In one memorable passage, Janzen’s mother tries to convince her to consider dating her first cousin, Waldemar.

In a state of desperation, Janzen fled into the arms of her family: conservative Mennonites who live in California, and a world away from her in terms of their attitude toward how life should be lived. Janzen was a drinker who avoided church and had chosen not to have kids. “The only reason [Mennonites] are nice to me is that my dad is famous”—in the book she describes him as “the Mennonite equivalent of the pope”—“my mom makes great pie, and I babysat their kids when I was 12.”

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home. By Rhoda Janzen. 256 Pages. Henry Holt and Co. $22. The five months she spent with them, recovering and taking stock of the chaotic life she was leading, form the foundation of her new memoir, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. “After my ex-husband left me, I was really free to take risks and reinvent myself,” Janzen says. “This idea of moving back [in with my family] in order to move forward really resonated with me.”

A quick primer on the Mennonites: They are not the Amish. “That’s the biggest misconception,” Janzen notes. “People ask if they have horses and buggies. But they send their kids to public schools, they drive cars.” Speaking in the most general terms, they’re a Christian sect that follows the teachings of Menno Simons and advocate a pious, nonviolent, anticonsumerist lifestyle. Janzen has helpfully supplied a “Mennonite History Primer” at the end of the book, combining history with jokes about their love of public prayer, sing-alongs, and sweater vests.

Despite the unfortunate premise, Janzen’s memoir is, in a word, hysterical. She finds endless humor in the details of her conservative childhood, where she wasn’t allowed to dance or listen to the radio. “I still thought you might be able to get pregnant by kissing until I was 21,” she adds. She came to school toting “shame-based food” like borscht, hot potato salad, and cotletten-and-ketchup sandwiches. “Cotletten are Mennonite meatballs…The addition of ketchup is an intriguing choice. It gives homemade bread a moist pink pliancy, not unlike damp Kleenex.”

She rebelled, both sartorially—a photo gallery on her publisher’s Web site provides several photos from the ‘80s in which it looks like her style inspiration is Tawny Kitaen in a Whitesnake video—and by leaving the fold, getting a Ph.D., publishing poetry, and marrying Nick, an atheist.

Her sister is also non-practicing, but her two brothers have both stayed in the religion. “They both asked me if there was anything they should know about in the book, but the intention wasn't to vilify the community. Instead, I would hope that the takeaway would be something like all the experiences you find negative or shaming are worth revisiting as an adult.”