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Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American. Julia Kasdorf. (Pandora Press co-published with Herald Press, 2002, 280 pp.) (Review by Helen L. Lapp)
As I read this accounting of the life of Joseph W. Yoder, I recalled the year I taught sixth grade in Belleville, Pennsylvania, and first heard his name and learned of his fame. It was obvious even then that regular Mennonites and Amish did not quite knew what to make of him, but I sensed then (four years after his death) that he counted as a notable son of that little "Big Valley" community.
Julia Kasdorf adds much to my image of a legendary author of the intriguing story, Rosanna of the Amish, and a well-known music teacher. A quote from page 108 provides one great snapshot: "In addition to teaching what he called 'the rudiments of music' — scales, rhythm, and solomization, the do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do system of sight singing and notation — Yoder introduced his singing school pupils in the literature of classical composers. Many farmers and children of farmers learned in his schools to perform music that was beyond the grasp of most sectarian, rural people .... "
Kasdorf paints a colorful canvas of this child of Amish tradition as he leans into the currents of change around him. "Yoder broke with convention yet negotiated a place for himself within Amish Mennonite culture," writes Rachel Waltner Goosson, teacher and author of Women Against the Good War.
"This is must reading for anyone interested in the paradoxes of Amish mentality in the American context, seen here through the prism of a lyrical writer's wrestling with her own calling," adds John L. Ruth, most recently author of The Earth is the Lord's: A Narrative History of Lancaster Mennonite Conference.
Professor of English at Goshen College, Ervin Beck, observes, "Fittingly, this study of the first successful Mennonite writer, Joseph W. Yoder, is written by a prize-winning poet whose ancestral and cultural roots lie in the same Big Valley ...." This biography sketches Yoder's brief stint as part of the GC faculty during its early beginnings as The Elkhart Institute.
Find the book and enjoy a trip through this segment of Amish and Mennonite history. You may extend your curiosity enough to discover a still-extant copy of the readable little biography by Joseph W. Yoder about his mother, published in 1940 as Rosanna of the Amish.
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