I Am A Hutterite by Mary Ann Kirkby ✔✔✔

Jean Bott loaned me this book after I saw it sitting on her coffee table when we were there for Study Group.  We had a Hutterite colony close to us when we lived in Chauvin back in the 50s, and I somehow had the impression theirs was a very repressive society, so I was interested in learning more about them.  I guess we fear - or at least mistrust- those we don't know, because we always regarded them with some suspicion.  I know my Mom thought they had stolen my pjs from our clothesline once!

What a pleasant surprise it was to read about these people - everything is held in common, although families have their own homes.  All meals are taken together in a large hall and the women take a week about cooking, baking, etc.  They are taught by a teacher from "the outside", and there are amusing stories by the author about how they regarded her clothing, and spent Saturdays trying on her shoes in the teacher's room behind their classroom. The men drive trucks, and they do leave the colony to shop ( I remember seeing them in Chauvin - not the women though, who wear black and white polka dots head scarves.  But the overall impression is one of happiness and contentment, good food, good company, living in a long-ago type atmosphere.

There were strict rules, however, the strictest one being that a man had to promise on his wedding day that he would never force his family to leave the colony, and of course, this is what happened to Mary Ann's family after her father and his brother-in-law, the head minister/mayor/rule enforcer constantly disagreed until such time as here Dad and Mother could not continue living there.

Their life after leaving the colony was very hard - isolated from everything they knew, living in extreme poverty, and suffering bullying and discrimination from their school mates.  Things eventually got better, relatively speaking, and they were able occasionally to return to the colony and visit with friends.

I didn't expect this book to be as interesting as it was, and also well-written.