Sears’ First Book Reflects Literary Community, Fine Writing And Life

Jennifer Sears’s first book, What Mennonite Girls are Good For, is a complex tale about “the countless ways that cruelty and goodness intersect,” author Mary Gaitskill said during a publication event with Sears in November at Books are Magic in Brooklyn.

The collection of 11 stories by Sears, a new member of CFF’s Executive Committee, follows Ruthie, a missionary child, as she matures and questions her faith. Sears wove other themes through the connected stories including links between love, abuse and religious fervor.

Ruthie sees the conflict between “what she’s told religiously and what she observes,” Sears said. Sears has described her stories as questioning both religion and the demands our American society makes on young girls “who often sense they want something. . . though they can’t articulate what it is they want.”        

Sears has called her book “racy.” However, “there is a sense of beauty in the stories,” Gaitskill said.  “It touches on a quite profound instinct for something more powerful than us.” 

The University of Iowa Press published Mennonite Girls after the book won the 2025 John Simmons Short Fiction award, given annually to emerging short fiction writers. The Press publishes the winners. Mennonite Girls was released in November.

Sears didn’t set out to make Ruthie’s story a book. It began as a series of short stories, written in a different order, at different times. Some were published separately.The book’s structure “finally fell into place” during a 2023 sabbatical from teaching at New York City College of Technology/City University of New York. 

Sears’ own upbringing in a Mennonite community helped shape the book. The stories include “distilled and reframed” moments of her own life. The book’s blue cover with its suggestion of old Mennonite quilt patterns also reflects Sears’ heritage, she wrote in the online literary magazine “Electric Lit.”

Sears has vivid memories of generations of Mennonite women, her mother, aunts and grandmother among them, working together to create art with their quilting. “That scraping sound of the wooden frame opening to stretch the fabric, the sight of women gathering around quilts in homes or church basements, and the time spent beside these women with their critical eye on my never-close-enough stitches are vital moments from my childhood,” Sears wrote. The quilts themselves reinforce memories with fabric scraps from old dresses, cheerleading uniforms, “even beloved t-shirts.”

That sense of a community creating art followed Sears as she moved into writing.

"For me, writing is a communal activity," Sears wrote in the acknowledgements section of her book.

“I’ve learned how marketing one’s book has a lot to do with building relationships and community,” said Sears. 

The importance of relationships was what surprised her most as her book moved toward publication, Sears wrote. “From getting blurbs, to getting local readings and working with booksellers, to working with the publicity staff, to showing up for other writers as they put their books out there. Developing friendships along the way makes the experience fulfilling and fun.”

“The emphasis on community makes this organization unique,” she said in an email interview with CFF.

Sears had finished her book before she joined CFF, where she has submitted other stories for critique. “The workshop method used at CFF is new to me,” she said of workshops where participants have only 2 or 3 minutes to comment on each manuscript. But short submissions make responding to others’ writing easier.

She plans to return to CFF workshops with more writing this spring. In the meantime, she's revising a novel.

Books are Magic event on YouTube.