Probably because I teach English at a Christian university, I get wrangled into conversations about what defines Christian literature. Does the content need to be explicitly Christian? Can a work be Christian...
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In the summer of 2014, Liz Jansen set out on a solo cross-country motorcycle trip, hoping to trace her ancestors’ migration across Canada nearly a century earlier. But a serious accident cut her journey...
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Growing up as a girl in the 1980s was not a positive experience for me. I often felt ostracized because I didn’t fit cultural expectations for what it meant to be female. I hated dresses and dressing up. My...
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This winter, as I read Karen González’s excellent new book on immigration, troubling news continued to unfold about events at the United States’ southern border. Governmental policy, fueled by xenophobic...
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At first blush, the plot and setting of Miriam Toews’ new novel, Women Talking, might appear too limited in scope to be compelling. The book’s primary action takes place over the span of two days, as eight...
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In October, the longtime evangelical leader Pat Robertson weighed in on the murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi in a Saudi consulate. According to Robertson, the United States needed to tread lightly with...
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In her excellent 2013 study of the Amish romance, Thrill of the Chaste, Valerie Weaver-Zercher decisively argues that books about the Amish are predominantly written for an evangelical Christian audience. The...
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As I write this review, the world is experiencing a refugee crisis unmatched in its history. According to the United Nations, 22.5 million people have been displaced from their homes worldwide; more than half...
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When my children were very young, there was all manner of reading material at my fingertips, ready to tell me exactly how I might raise perfect kids. I could read books on attachment and potty training, blogs...
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In early January, Oprah Winfrey gave an astounding speech at The Golden Globe awards, accepting the Cecil B. DeMille award for lifetime achievement and declaring “a new day is on the horizon” for women who...
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Iwill not soon forget an image David Williams creates in the opening chapters of his excellent novel, When the English Fall. The image is searing in its horror and in what it portends. Some kind of solar storm...
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On one Christian publisher’s site, Amish romance books are characterized as stories about Christian people following the “simple life.” Other books, offered by other publishers, announce right in the...
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In the next few years, I will celebrate my 50th birthday. My sons will graduate from high school (if we’re lucky!) and we will be empty nesters. My parents will turn 80, an age that strikes me as much older...
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I’m not one of those folks who reads historical fiction and longs for the past, for a more bucolic way of life and the wonder that might accompany the discovery of new frontiers. Indeed, I know a work of...
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In July, my parents celebrated their 53rd anniversary. This seems a miracle of sorts to me, not because their marriage was especially contentious but because they spent very little time together before...
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In the creative nonfiction course I teach every spring, I talk about a memoirist’s ability to both convey personal experience and also make connections with an audience. This interplay between the individual...
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In 2004, Cynthia Yoder broke new ground in Mennonite letters with Crazy Quilt: Pieces of a Mennonite Life. The memoir, one of the first of its kind written by a Mennonite, detailed the debilitating depression...
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People who have experienced devastating loss, like the death of a child or a terminal diagnosis, are familiar with the Christian clichés offered with loving intent but that do little to assuage their...
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When my 13-year-old son announced last spring that he wanted to play baseball again, I cringed. I had hoped the days of watching tedious games in freezing Oregon springtime were far behind us, our son having...
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In the title poem of Jeff Gundy’s Abandoned Homeland, the speaker begins with a question: “How else to describe this absurd, lovely world?” The rest of Gundy’s collection seems positioned to provide an...
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