Women without Men: Mennonite Refugees of the Second World War by Marlene Epp (review)

390 The Canadian Historical Review Chinese in colonized Southeast Asian countries controlled by various European powers stretches the meaning of globalization and transnationalism . In the case of the Peranakan, for example, the economic, historical, and political conditions ofCanada and the former Dutch East Indies are vastly different, and there is also a difference in time. Moreover , Canada and its inhabitants are constantly measured against, and sometimes threatened by, the United States. In Southeast Asia, the United States does not have a negative impact on the options of the Chinese. Despite these shortcomings and the perpetuation ofthe myth of the Chinese 'sojourner,' The Chinese in Vancouver is indeed a worthwhile effort. As local history, it enhances and legitimizes the Vancouver Chinese as a major player in the evolution ofChinese Canada. ANTHONY B. CHAN University ofWashington Women without Men: Mennonite Refagees ofthe Second World War. MARLENE EPP. Toronto: University ofToronto Press 2000. Pp. viii, 275, illus. $so.oo cloth, $2i.95 paper The master historical narrative of Canadian immigration, regardless of the era, begins with the journey or the arrival and focuses on the freedom-seeking men, and a few women, whose life in Canada is depicted as an economic and social triumph over their previous existence. More specifically, histories of postwar immigration to Canada are still approached from a variety ofdifferent historical trajectories that seldom intersect. Marlene Epp's excellent study Women without Men challenges the master narrative, and the narrower studies, by offering a comparative format that integrates the pre-emigration and post-immigrant experience , while focusing primarily on female refugees within a particular, in this case, ethno-religious, group. Epp's nuanced portrait of the 12,000 Soviet Mennonites who emigrated to Paraguay and Canada in the late 1940s and r95os will have a major impact on the way that future immigration histories are written. Starting with a brief description of the middle-class Mennonite existence in the pre-Stalinist era, Epp explores the impact of Stalin's purges in the late thirties, when men were forcibly taken from their families and Mennonite women began what, for many, would be more than a decade ofsurvival as 'women without men:· These women's trials before and during the war, their decisions to lead their families out of the Soviet Union to follow the German armies' retreat, and their experiences as refugees and later displaced persons offers a compelling portrait Book Reviews 391 ofthe impact ofgender on wartime and refugee status. Regardless ofera or nationality, the refugee experience, as Epp makes dear, typically includes a preponderance ofwomen and children. There is considerable room for comparative studies of different female refugee experiences across time periods and ethnic/religious groups, and it is hoped that Epp, or others, will produce work on this topic in the future. The combination ofarchival documents and oral histories (both those recorded shortly after the war and those taken by Epp) offer the possibility oftelling the long-silenced, or ignored, stories ofMennonite women's experiences. Epp's sophisticated, careful analysis highlights the dichotomies in the women's experiences, both remembered and lived, where long absent male fathers and husbands are still idealized; where women 's heroic roles are counterbalanced by their desire to fit within their traditional place as male-helpmates; and where lived realities ofhunger, war, and displacement led to many necessary situational compromises. In the later chapters, Epp enumerates experiences in Paraguay and Canada as the women struggle to learn new languages and customs, support their families, and cope with their 'rehabilitation' into the North American Mennonite faith with its stricter laws about dress, decorum, and social behaviour (particularly for women). These chapters offer fascinating case studies of the interaction between established groups and the newcomers. As well, Epp carefully details the negotiations these women were encouraged to make by a host society at once supportive and helpful, but also distrustful of wartime morals and women accustomed to the absence ofmale religious and familial leaders. Finally, the reminiscences of people like the Isaak family, who 'were dismayed to encounter large unpopulated areas of tree and prairie,' and a country that was 'less civilized' than the 'richness they had been expecting' offers a corrective to our traditional...