Alone: A Search for Joy

by Katie Funk Wiebe

Book by Wiebe, Katie Funk

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

For more then sixty years, Katie Funk Wiebe has given voice to her thoughts while sitting alone at her typewriter. She has been particularly adept at opening up her life to others and "wrapping words" around her questions, doubts, and struggles. In doing so, she invites her readers not only to listen but to recognize themselves in her stories. She has long believed that the way to keep people alive is by telling their stories. She tells family stories, and encourages others to do this also.

In addition to being an author, biographer, editor, columnist and essayist, Katie Funk Wiebe
is a speaker, preacher, pioneer, prophet, provocateur, feminist, historian and influential Mennonite. In 2000 The Mennonite named her one of twenty Mennonite Writers who have had “the most powerful influence on life and belief of the General Conference Mennonite Church and Mennonite Church in the 20th century."

In her retirement years she has written and spoken about church and family history, women's issues and aging.

She has written more than two thousand articles, columns and book reviews, and has written or edited more than twenty books. Her most recent books are "My Emigrant Father: Jacob J. Funk, 1896-1986" (2015), a biography of her father; and "A Strong Frailty: Agneta Janzen Block: Heroine of the faith in the former Soviet Union" (2014). She currently revising and updating her practical and encouraging 2009 book, "How to Write Your Personal and Family History: If you don't do it, who will?", due out from Skyhorse Publishing in February 2017.

She was born in northern Saskatchewan to German-Russian Mennonite immigrant parents. In 1962 she came to Kansas with her husband and children. Her husband died shortly thereafter. She taught at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, for 24 years, retiring in 1990 as professor emeritus.

She is the mother of four children: Joanna K. Wiebe, Susan H. Wiebe, Christine R. Wiebe (2000), and James Wiebe; seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Reviews

[erl · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read another of Katie Wiebe’s books and rather enjoyed it. I got nothing out of this one. It’s heavier on the Christianity and lighter on the universality. I think her perspective is mostly outdated, as she assumes mothers of young children have no education or marketable skills. While some women certainly fit that description, I think their husbands generally do, too. Educated men usually do not marry uneducated women, and on the whole, women in the US are better educated than men. She talks a lot about the role of widows in the church. The only part I found interesting was the appalling notion that a “good” widow is chaste— she shouldn’t remarry. What kind of nonsense is this? Someone else may find this book helpful. I did not.