Cover
Contents
Preface: Rewriting the Break
Acknowledgements
Introduction: On Rewriting Migration in Canadian Literature
Part 1: “The Tragic Curve of All Mennonites”: Narrating the Break Event
Narrative and Communal Identity
Rewriting a Usable Past
Time, Temporality, and the Strain of Repetition
Part 2: Literature by Mennonites in Canada/Mennonite Canadian Literature
The Mennonite Exotic
Chapter 1 - Mennonite History and/as Literature
Mennonites in Russia, Russian Mennonites
Rewriting the Break Event
On the Politics of the Narrative Arc
Conclusion
Chapter 2 - Gelassenheit or Exodus: My Harp Is Turnedto Mourning and the Theo-Pedagogical Narrative
Faith in Fiction
Exodus versus Gelassenheit
Fiction, Time, History
Violence and Repetition
Conclusion
Chapter 3 - Dreaming das Völklein: Lost in the Steppe and the Ethnic Narrative
The Mennonite Identity Crisis
Evidence of Ethnicity
Faith and the Ethnic Ghost
A People Apart
Time and Ethnicity
“Remembering What Will Happen”
Conclusion
Chapter 4 - The Individual in the Communal Story: The Russländer and the Trauma Narrative
The Individual Story in/versus the Communal Narrative
“Na Ja. And So They Killed Them All”: The Russländer asTrauma Narrative
“Lest the Spirit of the Story Pollute the Air”: Trauma and Cultural Identity
Conclusion
Chapter 5 - The Strain of Diaspora: The Blue Mountains of China and the Meta-Narrative
“A Stranger Shape of Novel”
The Threads of Diaspora
“After the Break”: Difference and Repetition
Meta-Narrative and Time
On the Way
Conclusion
Conclusion: On Reading Migration in Canadian Literature
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index
