A review by ruthiella
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen

3.0

Less a memoir and more a collection of essays mediating on the end of Janzen’s marriage and her Mennonite upbringing. Some of what she chronicles isn’t so unusual. I was raised Methodist by parents who neither drank nor cursed; I too suffered from the lack of a cool lunch box and the fact that my mother re-used zip lock bags (the 70’s were a rough time economically folks!). I never had to take Borscht for lunch, however, and I while I was not allowed to see R rated movies like Saturday Night Fever, I did get to learn the Hustle with my mother’s blessing. Occasionally this book made me laugh out loud, in particular any story involving Janzen’s mother, but the entire book doesn’t quite maintain the hilarity or the tone of the first chapter