AS I REMEMBER IT

Wanta’s adventurous memoir traces her journey from a nunnery to an artist’s studio.

The narrative begins in 1956, when the 14-year-old author entered the convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Two decades of poverty, chastity, and obedience followed; she also endured menial chores, and tells of witnessing troubling behavior by senior sisters and priests, as when a racist monsignor refused to admit a Black family to his parish. Wanta also experienced periods of exhaustion and loneliness that led her to doubt her vocation. But there were upsides to the life she chose, she writes, including free college, stimulating intellectual camaraderie with younger nuns, and fulfilling work as an educator in Wisconsin Catholic schools and as a social worker in Louisiana; she also highlights spiritual self-healing practice, and participation in a nuns’ fashion show after Vatican II raised hemlines. Wanta left the order in 1978 and began a knockabout secular life that included such jobs as telemarketing and flower arranging, subpar apartments, and painful bouts of tendonitis. However, her artistic talent led her to satisfying jobs in graphic design and a late-blooming career as a painter. Wanta’s picturesque remembrance sometimes feels haphazard. However, her portrait of convent life is rich in detail and psychological nuance, illuminating a mindset of humility and self-sacrifice in prose that’s down-to-earth and witty: “Sins belonged in the confessional, but it was hard to commit any in a convent environment.…The priest confessor said listening to nuns’ confessions was like being stoned to death with popcorn.” A concluding chapter circles back to Wanta’s childhood on a Wisconsin farm, offering a mix of drudgery and idyll; after a spell of potato-digging, for instance, the author’s father set vines alight and Wanta “ran around barefoot in the soft soil as the flames cast shadows of furrow upon furrow, each becoming smaller as it receded into the distance.” The result is a vivid recreation of a vanished mid-century America. (Black-and-white, uncredited photos of family members and documents are included.)

An absorbing portrait of an often surprising life.