Drawing on recent work in diaspora studies, Rewriting the Break Event offers a historicization of Mennonite literary studies in Canada, followed by close readings of five novels that rewrite the Mennonite break event through specific strains of emphasis, including a religious narrative, ethnic narrative, trauma narrative, and meta-narrative.

Robert Zacharias is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. He is coeditor, with Smaro Kamboureli, of Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literature.