1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910791052103321

Autore

Zacharias Robert <1977->

Titolo

Rewriting the break event : Mennonites & migration in Canadian literature / / Robert Zacharias

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Manitoba, Canada : , : University of Manitoba Press, , 2013

©2013

ISBN

0-88755-448-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xii, 227 pages)

Collana

Studies in Immigration and Culture, , 1914-1459 ; ; 8

Disciplina

813/.5409921289771

Soggetti

Mennonites - In literature

Soviet Union Emigration and immigration

Canada Emigration and immigration

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

; Machine generated contents note: ; ch. 1 Mennonite History and/as Literature -- ; ch. 2 Gelassenheit or Exodus: My Harp Is Turned to Mourning and the Theo-Pedagogical Narrative -- ; ch. 3 Dreaming das Volklein: Lost in the Steppe and the Ethnic Narrative -- ; ch. 4 Individual in the Communal Story: The Russlander and the Trauma Narrative -- ; ch. 5 Strain of Diaspora: The Blue Mountains of China and the Meta-Narrative.

Sommario/riassunto

Despite the fact that Russian Mennonites began arriving in Canada en masse in the 1870s, Mennonite Canadian literature has been marked by a compulsive retelling of the mass migration of some 20,000 Russian Mennonites to Canada following the collapse of the "Mennonite Commonwealth" in the 1920s. This privileging of a seminal dispersal within the community's broader history reveals the ways in which the 1920s narrative has come to function as an origin story, or "break event," for the Russian Mennonites in Canada, serving to affirm a communal identity across national and generational boundaries. Drawing on recent work in diaspora studies, Rewriting the Break Event offers a historicization of Mennonite literary studies in Canada, followed by close readings of five novels that rewrite the Mennonite break event through specific strains of emphasis, including a religious



narrative, ethnic narrative, trauma narrative, and meta-narrative. The result is thoughtful and engaging exploration of the shifting contours of Mennonite collective identity, and an exciting new methodology that promises to resituate the discourse of migrant writing in Canada.