Plain
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A01=Mary Alice Hostetter
adolescence
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Mary Alice Hostetter
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BG
Category=DNBX1
Category=DNC
Category=HRCC99
Category=JBSJ
Category=QRMB3
COP=United States
Delivery_Pre-order
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
family farms
Language_English
lesbian
LGBT
LGBTQIA
memoir
Mennonite
minority religion
PA=Not yet available
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Forthcoming
rural life
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780299340445
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 07 Jan 2025
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Plain tells the story of Mary Alice Hostetter’s journey to define an authentic self amid a rigid religious upbringing in a Mennonite farm family. Although endowed with a personality “prone toward questioning and challenging,” the young Mary Alice at first wants nothing more than to be a good girl, to do her share, and—alongside her eleven siblings—to work her family’s Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, farm. She feels fortunate to have been born into a religion where, as the familiar hymn states, she is “safe in the arms of Jesus.” As an adolescent, that keen desire for belonging becomes focused on her worldly peers, even though she knows that Mennonites consider themselves a people apart. Eventually she leaves behind the fields and fences of her youth, thinking she will finally be able to grow beyond the prohibitions of her church. Discovering and accepting her sexuality, she once again finds herself apart, on the outside of family, community, and societal norms.
This quietly powerful memoir of longing and acceptance casts a humanizing eye on a little-understood American religious tradition and a woman’s striving to grow within and beyond it.
This quietly powerful memoir of longing and acceptance casts a humanizing eye on a little-understood American religious tradition and a woman’s striving to grow within and beyond it.
Mary Alice Hostetter grew up the tenth of twelve children in a Mennonite farm family. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Gettysburg Review, HuffPost Personal, and elsewhere. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
