‘Mimicking maternal gestures’

As a Ph.D. student studying Mennonite history, Susie Fisher Stoesz finds it hard sometimes to explain to her family what exactly she does when she goes to her office at the University of Manitoba. She hopes that will change with her contribution to Mothering Mennonite, a collection of essays that explores the roles of mothering in Mennonite contexts and the world at large.

“I feel for the first time like I’ll be able to show my family what it is I do every day,” the 29-year-old says. “This is really bringing together the academic and non-academic parts of my life, and I’m honoured to tell a story about my in-laws.”

Published in May by Demeter Press, Mothering Mennonite brings together work by scholars from across North America. Rachel Epp Buller, assistant professor of art at Bethel College in Newton, Kan., and Kerry Fast, a freelance editor, writer and researcher in Toronto, edited the collection.

Fisher Stoesz’s essay, “Mimicking maternal gestures: Women’s memories, narratives and intergenerational identities,” explores the way her mother-in-law, Vi Stoesz; Vi’s sister, Yvonne Stoesz; and their mother, Sara Unger Stoesz, share memories, and how specific family stories have shaped the ideas of all three about Mennonite life and their familial roles.

While interviewing each woman, Fisher Stoesz found that, for the three, the relationship between memory, motherhood and Mennonite identity is built on a particular narrative of Grigoryevka, the village in Ukraine where Sara’s mother, Susanna, was born and raised.

“Tales surfaced time and again in each of the women’s narratives that told about the love of community, nonviolence and steadfast faith in the face of danger in the chaotic and violent unfolding of the Russian Revolution,” Fisher Stoesz writes in her essay. “The Grigoryevka story became central to the retelling of family stories. It contributed to the formation of these three Mennonite women’s identities as mothers, and also to their roles as active agents in the passing on of their own ideas about what it means to be Mennonite.”

Fisher Stoesz notes that each woman has had a different experience of motherhood. Sara raised four children on a farm in Altona, Man.; Vi had her first child at 25 as an unmarried woman, which put a strain on her familial relationships for a time; and Yvonne and her husband adopted three children because of infertility.

“They had such different experiences of motherhood . . . [but] for some reason, that idea of storytelling and making sure that their children had a sense of their family history, and a sense of the lessons in that family history, was key,” Fisher Stoesz tells Young Voices. “It has helped sustain in that particular family a sense of identity.”

It’s an example of the key role women play in ethnic and theological development, as well as in the maintenance of traditional faith, according to Fisher Stoesz. It counters the idea that theology is only worked out by men in the church. “The fact that the central story of the faith of these women is rooted in a story told by Susanna says something very different,” she says. “I think that’s powerful.”

Fisher Stoesz says she enjoyed researching and writing the essay because it deepened her knowledge of what is now her family history. She grew up in a household she describes as secular, and fell in love with studying religion while in high school at Westgate Mennonite Collegiate, Winnipeg. She was baptized at Hope Mennonite Church in 2005. In recent years, she has attended St. Margaret’s Anglican Church, a parish in Winnipeg she studied as part of her master’s thesis.

When asked how she classifies herself, Fisher Stoesz replies that she doesn’t. “I feel so much emotion and so much love for Mennonites,” she says. “In so many ways, the community gave me a home. I feel such a desire to give to [the Mennonite] community because it’s also my family. I am Mennonite because I was baptized [in the Mennonite church]. I am some days quite secular [and] other days I identify with the Anglican tradition. It’s all just a work in progress, I guess.”

She hopes to graduate with her Ph.D. in two or three years, find work as a professor somewhere in Canada, and keep researching and writing. Until then, she’s glad to share some of the work she’s done via Mothering Mennonite.

“I am honoured to be published among this group of women,” she says. “I think all of the papers and poetry in this collection are very powerful. As somebody who is not a mother, I feel so honoured to be a part of this group of women. I’m young and naïve in many ways, and I think to see my name in this list is very powerful. I feel blessed.”