Considering our histories: a review of East of Liberal: Notes on the Land by Raylene Hinz-Penner
“I set out to tell this story of life on the land,” wrote Raylene Hinz-Penner in her newest book, East of Liberal: Notes on the Land (Cascadia Publishing House, Dec. 2022). “As I moved through generational time I began to recognize the mythologies created by story, the ways our beliefs are shaped in community. I am only beginning to recognize what it means to be a Mennonite settler.”
Hinz-Penner says she never wanted to write a memoir. “What’s so unique about my story?” she pondered. “But I always did want to write a story of place.” East of Liberal: Notes on the Land is both a story of place and a memoir as it weaves researched history with Hinz-Penner’s own experiences and memories about the land her family owned and she grew up on three miles east of the southwest Kansas town of Liberal. As a retired literature and writing professor, she also incorporates her own poetry with the beautifully crafted prose. Hinz- Penner now lives in an independent living neighborhood at Bluestem Communities’ Kidron Bethel Village in North Newton.
“I think I always knew I wanted to tell the story of my parents coming to that land east of Liberal because it felt like a unique story,” Hinz-Penner said. “They didn’t come when the land was settled in the early 1900’s. They came so many years later – after the Dust Bowl – and they tried to farm sand. That’s a distinctive story.”
The book is Hinz-Penner’s second and also carries some lessons she learned while writing her first, Searching for Sacred Ground: The Journey of Chief Lawrence Hart, Mennonite (Cascadia Publishing House, 2007), which tells the story of a modern-day Cheyenne peace chief.
“Chief Lawrence Hart taught me the value of deep history,” said Hinz- Penner. “When he told stories, he told them in the context of generations prior. I was inspired by that idea of deep history and how we are who we are because of how others lived.”
Organized over an annual cycle of seasons, solstices and equinoxes, holidays, celebrations and traditions, East of Liberal explores the things that are integral to shaping Hinz-Penner’s life – place, farming and faith.
“I think I had a slow dawning that farmers, in some ways, share attitudes toward the land with indigenous peoples who lived so closely on it,” said Hinz-Penner. “I have a huge need to celebrate every equinox, every full
moon. Where does that come from? Is it part of my Mennonite background? Is it a farmer? Maybe it’s just my closeness with the land growing up. Farmers’ lives are pretty routine – they need celebrations. We got so excited about the Christian celebrations, and then I started digging into those and they are linked very deeply with the indigenous relationship with the earth.”
Hinz-Penner was also inspired by an indigenous calendar that hung above her desk during the nearly decade of research and writing of East of Liberal that shows the Ancestral Puebloans circle of time. As she looked at it daily, she began noticing the similarities with a farmer’s cycle of time with the land and even the annual celebrations part of her Christian Mennonite faith.
A theme of tension runs throughout the narrative. Tension between a childhood viewed as happy and positive with thoughts of what settlement on the land meant for
the native peoples who lived there previously. Tension between deep appreciation for her Mennonite faith and the attitudes of land settlers who tried to force the land into working for them.
In the last few years, both responsible stewardship of the land and land acknowledgement – the idea and practice of recognizing indigenous peoples as the original stewards of the land that was often taken from them and what it meant for them – have become particularly important to Hinz- Penner. Both are explored in detail throughout the book.
“Our own farming people believed if the land wasn’t being farmed it was empty,” said Hinz-Penner. “That made Native Americans invisible. My parents came to that land with nothing and used that land to live very well. I benefitted from that and I will inherit it someday. All the while, the native people who were there before got shoved onto reservations in Oklahoma and lived a very different life than me. It’s important for me to recognize that inequality. It’s not about reparations or a condemnation of farming. More than anything it’s a recognition of what we got because of what others lost.”
East of Liberal is reflective and relatable, allowing the reader to perhaps consider ideas different than those that have shaped life and thinking for many years and generations. It can make readers consider their own histories regardless of where and how their experiences may differ, and give new appreciation for the things we take for granted.