Rebels, Exiles, and Bridge Builders

“A century of stories from Mexico’s Mennonite villages…”

Through poetic vignettes and photography, Rebels, Exiles, and Bridge Builders: A Century of Stories from Mexico’s Mennonite Villages portrays one hundred years of cross-cultural encounters in the Tres Culturas region. A century that saw significant changes with intermarriage, sociopolitical pressures, and technological advances on the rise, with people pursuing higher education, economic opportunities, and different religious experiences. Race and ethnicity, gender and labor, migration and excommunication are at the heart of these stories. Some show what it’s like to leave the only community they’ve known—choosing love and education over family and tradition. While others examine what it means to push the boundaries and still decide to stay.

Village Mechanics

“Cowboys, apostates, mothers & narcos…”‘

Written from a reservoir of deep experience and a keen observational eye, these poems tell us a little-known narrative of a Mennonite borderlands community. As the speakers struggle with their heritage, religious restrictions, and their place both within and apart from Mexican society, Carl-Klassen asks us to imagine what it means to be alien and to find your family in a world far from where your ancestors first took root, struggling to fit in with different overlapping communities structured upon class and gender differences, colonialism, and religion. Cowboys, apostates, mothers, narcos, and other characters appear within the complexities of this story to share their own histories. We were impressed with the authenticity of the explorations here, with the use of seemingly simple language to achieve intricate poetic motion. We were impressed with the confidence of the narrative, with both its certainty and the doubt it uncovers. We felt ourselves transported into Chihuahua and El Paso, breathing the same air and feeling the same sun as the voices in the collection.

Ain’t Country Like You

“You act like there’s only one way to be country…”

Winner of the 2019 Digging Press Chapbook Series Award. Abigail Carl-Klassen depicts rural spaces inhabited by a community dependent on the boom and bust cycles of oil fields and cash crop agriculture. The personal and confrontational voices in these eighteen poems embody the constant tension of political rhetoric and social vulnerability in contemporary America. Unapologetically tender and with a hopeful nod to an elusive American ideal, these poems imbue a nation’s struggles with culture, class, and identity.