My Journey in Chinese Women’s Studies

I was born in 1944 to a Mennonite farm family near Normal, Illinois, a small town adjoining the town of Bloomington, 130 miles south of Chicago, Illinois. Mennonites are Protestant Christians who emphasize pacifism and helping people in need. My father, Peter Ropp, was a farmer and my mother, Ann, was a farm wife and a nurse. Ann grew up on a Mennonite farm in western Missouri. She had dropped out of school by the age of 14 to help with farmwork and housework, but she was interested in medicine because her mother was a midwife and as a girl she traveled with her mother to help in the delivery of babies. So in her mid-20s she took an exam to qualify to enroll in the Mennonite School of Nursing in Bloomington, Illinois, 300 miles northeast of her parents’ home. There she met my father and they were married after she graduated from nurses’ training. I have two brothers, Allen and Ron, ten and seven years older than me. When I was born, my father once told me that my mother cried because she was hoping for a daughter since she already had two sons. I later found irrefutable evidence of her desire for a daughter in her diary: Saturday March 25, 1944. Partly cloudy. Paul Stanley was born at 3:30 a.m. Got along pretty good. Sure had after pains all day. Pete here part of day, [sister] Ida came in eve. [Neighbor] Lucy Catherine here few minutes in eve. Baby weighed 6# 9oz. Kinda disappointed it wasn’t a girl, but he’s nice.