Pulled from the cloistered three-room Yoder School, full of Mennonite and Amish kids, she pursues her goal to become a teacher in a variety of classrooms, all unfamiliar to her, and then graduates from Antioch University, the hippie college of Yellow Springs, Ohio. This coming-of-age memoir shows how a young Mennonite, uprooted from her community in the mountains of western Maryland, forges her identity. Here is a story of leaving a childhood of innocence to go out into the world and to learn in new ways from different people in places that don't feel like home. When a young Mennonite girl is uprooted from her cloistered community, she pines to go back to Yoder School where learning was full of wonder and where she decided to be a teacher.

'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.'Because this story is so well-written, we the readers follow the narrator's progress with the eagerness of a child at play.' -Shirley Hershey Showalter, Author, Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World, in the Foreword Filled with platitudes (Everyone's childhood is some mixture of sweet and sour), this memoir will interest readers who want to learn about growing up Mennonite, but it provides more information than insight. The fact that the memoir is written in chronological order makes it read like a diary and deprives it of narrative drive. Unfortunately, Showalter's simplistic writing style limits the scope of some of her observations. Readers learn how a Mennonite community responds to families in mourning, as when Showalter's sister dies, and how women in Mennonite families pass on culinary heirlooms, i.e., handwritten recipe books. The author-memoirist describes growing up Mennonite her story affords glimpses into this religion's traditions and rituals. Aside from initial chapters that outline basic information about Showalter's ancestors, this is mainly the story of Showalter's childhood, up to her teenage years. Showalter, now a former college president, was born to a Mennonite family in Lititz, Penn., and much of her memoir takes place in this small town with a Mennonite community at its center.

Blush by Shirley Hershey Showalter