Summary | Author | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions
I Am Hutterite: The Fascinating True Story of a Young Woman's Journey to Reclaim her Heritige
Mary-Anne Kirby, 2010
Thomas Nelson, Inc.
244 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780849948107
In Brief
A fascinating journey into the heart and culture of a reclusive religious community.
I Am Hutterite takes readers into the hidden heart of the little-known Hutterite colony where author Mary-Ann Kirkby spent her childhood. When she was ten, her parents packed up their seven children and a handful of possessions and left the colony to start a new life. Overnight they were thrust into a world they didn't understand, a world that did not understand them.
With great humor, Kirkby describes how she adapted to popular culture, and with raw honesty she describes her family's deep sense of loss for their community. More than a history lesson, I Am Hutterite is a powerful tale of retracing steps and understanding how our beginnings often define us. (From the publisher.)
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About the Author
• Birth—ca. 1959
• Where—Manitoba, Canada
• Awards—Sask Book Awards (Nonfiction); 2 Can-Pro Awards
(tv journalism)
• Currently—lives in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada
Mary-Ann Kirkby spent the first ten years of her life in a Hutterite Colony in Manitoba, Canada. In 1969 her parents did the unthinkable. They uprooted their 7 children and left the only life they had ever known, thrusting them into a society they did not understand and which did not understand them.
Mary-Ann's transition into popular culture is both heartbreaking and hilarious. An award-winning television journalist, Mary-Ann learned the fine art of storytelling at the knees of her gifted Hutterite teachers.
Mary-Ann began her career as a news anchor and reporter in Dauphin, Manitoba. Later, she became senior reporter at CTV in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. From 1993-1996, she worked in Ottawa as a freelance journalist and served as Media Relations Consultant for the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
She lives in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. (From the publisher.)
Critics Say . . .
This sweeping prairie memoir, self-published in Canada in 2007, rapidly garnered both commercial and literary applause. Recounting the author's journey from a Hutterite girlhood to an adolescence of desperate striving to catch up with fashions of the time, the book manages to pack information about Hutterite life into a coming-of-age narrative without slowing it down. Kirkby's family moved away from their Manitoba colony when she was 10 years old, after what she calls a “near idyllic childhood” in the cradle of a communal society. Once a reader commits the many characters and their relationships to each other to memory, the book becomes as riveting and well-paced as a novel. Kirkby captures the complex cadences of Hutterite life—the bawdy humor and knack for storytelling that stands beside austere ritual, the poverty of personal possession and freedom that exists beside the security of community life—with pitch-perfect writing. She also manages to avoid either vilifying or romanticizing a culture that has been subjected to both. Readers will find themselves hoping that Kirkby follows the popular trend in memoir writing: producing a sequel.
Publishers Weekly
The Hutterite faith was founded in the 16th century by Jacob Hutter, an Austrian hatmaker who believed in shared property and people working together for the common good. Their practices of adult baptism, staunch pacifism, and community life led to persecution that drove them from Europe to North America. Those prejudices continue to this day: Kirkby details the misunderstandings faced when her family attempted to integrate into Canadian society. She tells the story of several generations of both sides of her family, their immigration to Canada, their becoming part of the Hutterite community, and what drove her parents to leave to join the "English" world of outside society. Kirkby describes her journey from burying her past to fit in as a child with her peers to finding acceptance of her heritage as an adult while writing this book. Interlaced throughout are descriptions of Hutterite cuisine and fashion, and explanations of religious practices and politics within these groups. Verdict: Kirkby's prose weaves a poignant tapestry of life in a Hutterite colony, both the joys and the hardships, a story that is at times heartbreaking. But readers won't be able to put the book down as they're drawn into her world. Those who grew up in "English" society will get to enjoy not only a well-researched family history but also a wonderfully detailed cultural and religious history of these societies as shown through the eyes of the author. Highly recommended. —Crystal Goldman, San José State Univ. Lib., CA
Library Journal
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Book Club Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for I Am Hutterite:
1. Begin with a discussion of the history of the Hutterites: their martyred founder, Jacob Hutter, and his beliefs; their fleeing persecution and eventual diaspora in the U.S. and Canada. How different are the Hutterites' beliefs from mainstream Christianity...and what are the similarities? How similar are the Hutterites to Amish and Mennonite communities?
2. What was it like for Mary-Ann, as a child, to live in the Hutterite colony? In what ways did her childhood differ from your own? Do you feel Mary-Ann idealized her childhood years in the colony by glossing over troubles...or did she paint a fairly realistic picture?
3. What inferences can you draw from Mary-Ann's description of life in a tightly controlled, highly structured religious community? What are the benefits, what are the drawbacks?
4. Talk about the disagreement between Mary-Ann's father and uncle that drove the family from the colony. How important was the role of forgiveness to her parents and how did they find a way to forgive?
5. Discuss the hardships the family—parents and children— struggled to adapt to the "English" world. What struck you most about their trials—what was most difficult for them...what did you find particularly heart-rending...surprising...or even funny?
6. Talk about the prejudices the family faced in the English world?
7. Does the Hutterite way of life—its simplicity and interdepen-dence—cause you to reflect upon our own culture with its consumerism and emphasis on the individual? Does our modern way of life come across as better or worse? Are there things we could learn from the Hutterites?
8. How does Mary-Ann eventually carve out her own identity? What does she learn from her past? Why does she choose to embrace her heritage rather than ignore—or, worse, reject—it? In what ways does she believe her past has enriched her life?
9. Would you like to see a sequel to this memoir?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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