Stories vs. Fiction

I think that there will be a decent role for Mennonite fiction. It might not be a huge role, but a decent one nonetheless. I think that the role for fiction would have new themes or a very different perspective when it comes to the religion and/or how the Mennonites live.

With these stories written by Mennonite writers, it will give an outsider something new to look at. What I mean is that the outsider will have an example of how things are "ran" rather than it being shoved in their faces. The outsider will be able to be eased into a new situation.

When a Mennonite writer tells his or her inside story to an outsider, the writer "gets in trouble" for it, especially if the writer mentions things that are not positive. The insiders will say that this is not true, this never happened in the history of Mennonites, and everything else. Insiders do not want their lives to be known. They, in a way, want to be left alone. The Mennonites probably want to seem perfect to the outside world. When the story is told to an insider, the insider will know what is going on and they will probably not say that something was wrong.

I think that Mennonites would believe that the story would need to be culturally accurate. Personally, I would not mind it being both. In stories, you have to have adventure or else it is going to be boring. Let us take the Amish for example. You can't have a book where the characters get up at five in the morning, do the farm work, go to church, and go to bed. Well, you can, but like I said, it would be a very boring book. Having two or three hundred pages of the same thing. Just for cultural accuracy! Personally, I think Pearl Diver would be a good representation of both culturally accurate and humanly compelling.

Once again, if it came from a Mennonite reader's point-of-view, the writer would most likely have to fully faithfully represent the community. The writer would probably "damn the community" (pardon my French) if he or she said that Dirk Willems was a female rather than a male. He or she would also probably curse the community by saying that the Mennonites are non-believers or something that would be the opposite of the community. The writer can say that the community always get together and have drinking (alcohol or beer) contests and the writer will end up having people on their doorstep at three in the morning.

In my personal opinion, the Mennonite writer does not have very much freedom when they write something. He or she will have people looking over the writer's shoulder every time they write, just because the community does not like what has been said.

It is also my personal opinion that the community needs to leave the writer alone. If he or she wants to say something "bad" about the community, then let them do it. The story is only written by one person, not by 10,000 people. If the Mennonite reader does not like what has been said in a book, then they do not have to read it. It is not like the reader was forced to read it. If you are a reader and you do not like what has been said in a book about your community, you "do not have the right to tell the writer" that they were in the wrong and that you could have written a better story.

So, in the end, there is a role for fiction in Mennonite literature in the future. But that role is not going to be very big, given the fact that the story is Mennonite and the writer is Mennonite.