Audiobook received for free through NetGalley

I stalled out in this book a couple times and finally forgot about it at 15% through. It was written well and wanted to keep listening but it wasn’t my cup of tea.

In the 1950's Mennonite missionaries went to Somalia. The product of that trip was a marriage between a missionary and a Somali Muslim and their child is the author of this book. Her story weaves her personal search for identity and belonging with that of the Mennonite people. She gives us their history out of Germany/Switzerland and into her homeland as well as in Uzbekistan. Here she journeys to a small village stronghold of the religion within larger Muslim territory, telling us of her journey in modern times and that of the missionary leader and the group in the early 19th century. 

I did this one on audio and I think that helped with readability. Sofia's personal story, thoughts and feelings are very compelling but that is interspersed with sections of drier history and philosophical ponderings. I think it was a good way to present a slice of history that is not well known and perhaps not largely sought after. She made it interesting and while I wouldn't call myself an expert on the topic by any means, I feel like I have a nice understanding of a lesser known group of people and their history. I also have a fonder feeling of the Mennonites who both want to spread their religion but also practice religious tolerance.

I am sure this one will resonate with anyone who has straddled the line between two groups of identity. The history here may be a bit obscure but it is well told and the overall message of peace, understanding and belonging. A bit memoir, a chunk of history, a sprinkle of philosophy and a dash of travelogue, this one will definitely challenge you and get you to think.

Thanks to HighBridge Audio for gifted access via Netgalley. All opinions above are my own.

I’m late on this but I really enjoyed Sofia Samatar’s memoir/history The White Mosque. This book weaves personal history with broader religious history. It’s very poignant, discussing being biracial and complex relationships to religion and religious community. I enjoyed the travel aspect of it, and I learned a lot. The narrator is also incredible. I would say some of the tonal shifts in the writing were lost due to the audio format, but on the whole I highly recommend it.

Colleen Chi-Girl
Rating: 4 STARS
Bookshelves: 2023, ancestry-genealogy, anti-racist, asia-asian, audio, bios-memoirs, education-teaching, netgalley, non-fic, pennsylvania, switzerland, women-centered

This memoir is so unusual and incredibly interesting, I still can't get my head around it, but I am so happy to have listened to it on an ARC audiobook, wonderfully narrated by the author, Sofia Samatar.

This complex memoir involves a journey, both physical and metaphorical. There's a current day bus tour through Central Asia where we learn of the various Muslim and Mennonite histories...yes Mennonite. It corresponds with a historic 1880's journey when a wagon train of Dutch-Suisse-German Mennonites decided to take their own trek from Russia into Central Asia, in order to spread the word of the 2nd coming of Jesus in this area.

We come to learn that Samatar is sharing her own family history: “My mother’s family are Swiss-German Mennonites, my father’s Somali Muslims.” Samatar took that bus tour herself to follow in her ancestors footsteps. We also learn that she grew up in the US as one of the few Mennonites of color and can only imagine how unusual and difficult this must have been for a young girl. This is a history I was certainly never taught growing up in the US or even in college, so I appreciated the opportunity to learn this valuable information.

What I appreciated is how in-tune and honest Samatar is about her complicated history, where missionaries arrive in a new and foreign land full of their own new ideas and misconceptions, while not frequently considering the effect and aftermath it has on the people and communities. There was in fact the establishment of a small Christian village in the Muslim Khanate of Khiva, which was named Ak Metchet, "The White Mosque," after the Mennonites’ whitewashed church, where the village lasted for fifty years.

My only slight criticism is that it was so highly detailed and therefore about an hour or two longer than I would've preferred.

Thank you to NetGalley, Sofia Samatar, and to RB Media (the largest publisher of audiobooks, including: Recorded Books, Tantor, and HighBridge) for this advanced copy.

I accessed a digital review copy of this book from the publisher.
The central story of the book is the author's journey through Uzbekistan, following the trail of German-speaking Mennonite travelers from a time before. Mixed in this is the author's personal journey with the religion, the history of the faith, and other stories.
Because the author includes so many different views, the book felt disjointed. I think that the book would have done better as two books so that the author could focus on one topic at a time. That said, the story was interesting and informative.

4 stars

This book is part a personal memoir, part a sprawling history of many interrelated things. It’s about Mennonites, Muslims, the complexity of identity, the diaspora experience, and apocalypse. It’s beautifully written & full of fascinating stories. I highly recommend it!

[What I liked:]

•While I vaguely knew about the Mennonites who settled along the Volga in Russia, I had never heard of the group that left the Russian Empire to await the apocalypse in Central Asia. The story of their journey, what happened to their descendants, and their relationship with the village & Muslim cleric that gave them shelter is fascinating.

•The writer’s reflections on the complexity of identity and belonging are insightful. She shares about her childhood as the daughter of a Mennonite woman from Pennsylvania & a Somali Muslim father, and links her experiences to the interactions between the Mennonite and Muslim communities in Central Asia, as well as Mennonite missionary interactions with various cultures.

•The prose is lovely and the writer’s sense of joy, wonder, and curiosity are a delight to read about. She also shares so many fun and interesting tidbits of information. For example, did you know that Langston Hughes visited what is now Uzbekistan in the 1930’s? Or that samosas originated in Uzbekistan and were brought to India with the Moghul dynasty?


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•I have no complaints or criticisms, this is a fantastic book!

CW: torture, murder, racism, sexism, queer phobia

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

Samatar uses her love for stories and research to answer a question tied very intimately to her own history and identity. She is on a journey that mirrors the one her Mennonite ancestors took as they sought where was promised and where they would belong. Along the way she uncovers the ways in which their dream was challenged, their own misheld beliefs of who could truly be Mennonite and what that meant for her and her fitting into that tapestry, that history and experience.

What I enjoyed the most about this memoir is that in searching for and travelling the route the very first group took, Smatar is reckoning with an imperfect structure and belief system, as they all are, but yet she wants to find the truth, beauty, and darkness that all make this story her story too.

I was drawn to this book because I knew nothing about the history of Mennonites in Uzbekistan and thought that sounded fascinating. While this book was about that, it was also about so much more. At first I was a little thrown off by the descriptive writing, and maybe thought it was a bit too much. But it made sense when I learned that the author is a poet, and as the book went on I grew to really appreciate it and enjoy being inside Samatar's head.

I won't rate books that I don't finish.
My NetGalley completion % of books is something that I like to keep high.
I finished The White Mosque; was so happy to complete it.
For a while I was having problems getting the audio to play (probably because of the archive date). I borrowed the book from the library. The library version did include some pictures. And you could tell that each section of a chapter was more like an essay, rather than a continuous chapter. But I was - finally - able to get the audiobook to play.

One thing that I did like about the audiobook, it was narrated by Sofia Samatar, the author. So there was no question regarding inflections or tones.

One thought that continuously crossed my mind when reading was that "the author likes her own writing".

Someone in one of my clubs is Mennonite and it is intriguing to me to learn more about the religion and culture. I did learn about Anabaptists, believing in baptism as an adult rather than a child.

And much of the focus in the book was comparing writings from Mennonites in central Asia and the author's pilgrimage to the same area. She noted that in America the dress and not watching all the TV shows and not having the newest model of cell phone; and contrasted this to peers in central Asia. (Going from being "looked down upon" to "top of the food chain" ... my words, not the authors.)

The last 1/3 of The White Mosque had musings from what seemed to be the authors review of long lost diaries, but they were in 3rd person (or seemed to be). Was rather strange. And pointless. Again, thoughts that the author really likes her writing (way more than I was liking her writing).

I wanted to like The White Mosque. It sounded like it could be really interesting. I would say, that if you do like poetry, you will probably like this way more than I.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author Sofia Samatar and the publisher HighBridge Audio for approving my request for the Advance listen to the audiobook narrated by the author. The review of the advance copy is in exchange for an honest review. Because this review is low (in my opinion), I'm going to give the author and publisher the opportunity for me to delete this review if they email me.

3.5

Nonfiction is incredibly hard to rate, and memoirs even more so. Sofia Samatar’s The White Mosque is interesting in that it is part memoir, part travel writing, and part creative nonfiction about a 19th century pilgrimage of German-speaking Mennonites into Central Asia, a region I have recently become very fascinated by.

Samatar’s prose is beautiful and I liked a lot of her musings, especially surrounding her experiences being the daughter of a Swiss-Mennonite and Somali-Muslim. I also appreciated a lot of the background on Mennonites and how and why this group ended up building a community in Uzbekistan. That being said, I had some issues with the structure and pacing of the book.

In the first quarter, Samatar presents the basic facts about this pilgrimage and it left me wondering how there was still 75% of the book left. She does take time to give details about individuals involved in the pilgrimage and some other figures of interest in the era and area, and she provides some interesting insight into heavy topics like religious colonization and identity/connection. Unfortunately, the narrative was a little too fragmented for my tastes and I often found myself wondering what the point was or if she tried to tackle too many things in one book.

I did like the audiobook pretty well. Samatar narrates the book herself (which is my preference with memoirs) and I think she did a good job. This book also had me looking up extra information about people and places and ideas mentioned, so I am excited to learn more about Mennonites and Uzbekistan/Central Asia.

Memoirs are hard to rate. Sofia is the daughter of a Swiss-Mennonite and Somali-Muslim. This in itself immediately drew me in. Both of these religions are usually seen as very insular, especially on the outside looking in. I found her viewpoints to be quite diverse and modern. Shows what I know. Off to read more about Mennonites, because I have zero clue what that's about.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.

I had a difficult time following this book. It jumped from place to place and felt it was more a history of the Mennonites from this area rather than a memoir. I wanted more of the author's personal experience and feel the categorization of this book as a novel is misleading.

This book attempts to do three things:
1. Tell the story of the Mennonite group who made the long journey from Russia to Central Asia, where they believed Christ would return
2. Recount the author’s own travels to visit the site of the “White Mosque” this group established
3. Reckon with the Mennonite church’s history of prioritizing whiteness (despite its global reach) and with what it means to be a mixed race, non-white, or otherwise “othered” person in the Mennonite community

Each of these parts of topics was strong in its own right, but I was baffled by the structure of this book. I picked it up hoping to learn about a fascinating chapter of Mennonite history, and maybe, if I was lucky, become engrossed in a travel memoir. So imagine my surprise when the story of the Mennonite church in Central Asia essentially concluded in chapter 2.

While Samatar’s reflections on Mennonite identity were thought provoking and beautifully written, they were ultimately not what I came to the story for, and I found myself wishing for more time with Jacob, Elizabeth, and the other historical figures. I do, however, think this book is incredibly insightful and important for people within the Mennonite identity (which I am not), so I think the biggest flaws can be chalked up to mismarketing.

In 2016, the author joined a tour group of Mennonites and travelled to Khiva, Uzbekistan. The goal was the village of Ak Metchet or “white mosque.” In the late 19th century a group of German-speaking Mennonites travelled from Russia to Uzbekistan and established a small village called Ak Metchet or The White Mosque in the middle of a Muslim area. Of Swiss-German Mennonite and Somali-Muslim heritage, Author Sofia Samatar is fascinated by this interesting historical fact and embarks on this tour to see and experience Ak Metchet. As she documents her travels, she embeds her memoir with insights from other documentarists and various other individuals along the way. Sharing the stage is her personal identity - who she is, where she came from, and her ethnic, religious, and cultural background. Her writing is captivating - in research, prose, and description. This was an interesting listen narrated by the author. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

The White Mosque was a super interesting non-fiction read about Mennonites in Uzbekistan. The author also delves into issues of race, religion, connection with home country, etc. It was very relevant for today's climate, but also very interesting about a group I had no idea about!