Women Talking (2018) is the seventh novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews. Toews describes her novel as "an imagined response to real events," the gas-facilitated rapes that took place on the Manitoba Colony, a remote and isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia:[1] Between 2005 and 2009, over a hundred girls and women in the colony woke up to discover that they had been raped in their sleep. These nighttime attacks were denied or dismissed by colony elders until finally it was revealed that a group of men from the colony were spraying an animal anaesthetic into their victims' houses to render them unconscious.[2] Toews' novel centers on the secret meetings of eight Mennonite women who, on behalf of the other women in the colony, must decide how to react to these traumatic events. They have only 48 hours before the colony men, who are away to post bail for the rapists, return.
Women Talking opens with a note from the author in which she describes her novel as both "a reaction through fiction" to true-life events and "an act of female imagination." The true-life events Toews refers to took place in the Manitoba Colony, a remote Mennonite community in Bolivia. Over a period of years, from 2005 to 2009, girls and women would wake up to discover they had been raped.[7] The nighttime attacks were attributed to ghosts and demons, or said to be God's punishment for their sins, or merely the result of "wild female imagination."[8][9] Eventually, it was revealed a group of male colonists had been using a chemical spray to sedate whole households in order to sexually assault the women. In 2011, eight men were convicted in a Bolivian court, each one receiving a lengthy prison sentence.[10]
Women Talking takes place in a Mennonite Colony called Molotschna in the aftermath of similarly traumatic events. Eight men believed to have committed the nighttime attacks are captured and locked in a shed. One of them is accidentally killed while being confronted by group of angry colonists and another is attacked with a scythe by Salome, one of the raped women. Peters, the bishop of Molotschna, calls in the city police to have the suspects arrested for their own protection. Now the men have gone to the city to post bail for the suspects so that they can await trial from home. It will also give the women the opportunity to forgive the men in order to guarantee everyone's place in heaven. Any woman who does not forgive the men, according to Peters, will be excommunicated.[11][12]
While the men are away, the women of the colony hold a referendum. On the ballot are three options, each one represented by an illustration: forgive the men and do nothing; stay in the colony and fight; leave the colony. The votes are equal between 'stay and fight' and 'leave,' and eight women, four from the Friesen family, and four from the Loewen family, are appointed to break the deadlock. In the hours that remain before the men return, the women hold secret meetings in a hayloft to debate the issue and come to a decision.[13]
Over two days—June 6 and 7, 2009—the women have a series of urgent debates: how to maintain their faith in light of the abuse, whether they will truly be denied entry into heaven if they refuse to forgive their offenders, what it means to forgive and to heal, and the pros and cons of staying or leaving.[14] Each of the eight women has been the victim of multiple rapes, and Ona Friesen is pregnant with a rapist's child. Although the rapes are not depicted in the novel, their violent nature is evoked: Greta is wearing uncomfortable dentures because her teeth were knocked out during her attack, and the women have "faint scars, from rope burns or from cuts." The women are interrupted by the owner of the hayloft, the elderly and infirm Earnest Thiessen. He asks the women if they are plotting to burn down his barn. Agata, the eldest of the Friesens, answers, "No, Ernie, there's no plot, we're only women talking."[15] Klaas, Mariche's husband, who has returned from the city to gather twelve horses for auction, also climbs into the hayloft and is told that the women have just finished quilting. That evening he gets drunk and beats Mariche.
The novel is presented as the minutes of the women's meetings, which are taken by August Epp, the colony's male schoolteacher who recently returned following a period of excommunication. August takes the minutes at the request of Ona, the object of his unrequited love and his childhood friend, as the women cannot read or write (they speak Plautdietsch). In addition to transcribing the women's conversations, he gradually reveals his own backstory: his parents' excommunication from the colony, his university studies in England, his arrest during a protest in London and imprisonment, his parents' death and disappearance, and his struggles with depression (which Mennonites call Narfa, meaning 'nerves').[16]
Ultimately, the women decide to leave the colony along with any boys under the age of 15. However, they still risk being found out by the Koop brothers, who are guarding Greta's two beloved horses, Ruth and Cheryl, in the neighbouring Chortiza Colony. In order to secure the horses and ensure the brothers do not alert the men, Autje and Neitje, the two teenage girls, lure the brothers to the hayloft with the promise of sex, arguing that their virginity is already lost. While in the act, Salome knocks out the brothers with the same belladonna spray that was used on the women for years. She also uses the spray on Scarface Janz, a 'do nothing' woman, for fear she will find a way to get to the city to alert the men, and on her son, Aaron, who does not want to leave the colony. The women leave in a convoy of buggies.
August is left behind watching over the sleeping brothers, pondering the women's sudden absence, his own life and decisions, and anticipating the return of the colony men. He reveals that the real reason his family was excommunicated was because, at the age of twelve, he began to bear a remarkable resemblance to Bishop Peters. He also understands that Ona asked him to take the minutes, not because the women needed them, but because she perceived that he was suicidal and thought he would be safe in the company of the women, performing a task.[17][18]
Characters
August Epp: The novel's narrator. Born in Molotschna but speaks and writes English, having lived in the United Kingdom after his parents were excommunicated, most likely because it became clear that August was the son of Bishop Peters (not his mother's husband). After being imprisoned for stealing a police horse at a protest in London, he returns to the colony to act as the schoolteacher. The other men in the colony regard him with suspicion and scorn. He is asked to record the minutes of the meeting by Ona, his childhood friend and the woman he loves.
Greta (Loewen): The matriarch of the Loewen family. Her teeth were knocked out for crying during an attack and has painfully large dentures. Passionate about her horses, Ruth and Cheryl.
Mariche (Loewen): Greta's older daughter, who is in a domestically abusive marriage to Klaus.
Mejal (Loewen): Greta's younger daughter. Chain smoker with "a secret life."
Autje (Loewen): Mariche's teenage daughter, who is close with Neitje.
Agata (Friesen): The pragmatic matriarch of the Friesen family.
Ona (Friesen): Agata's serene and dreamy older daughter, who is unmarried and pregnant as a result of rape. Her sister, Mina, hanged herself after discovering her daughter, Neitje’s, unconscious body smeared with blood and semen and being told by bishop Peters that it was "the work of Satan."
Salome (Friesen): Agata's fiery younger daughter. Her rage is "Vesuvian" and "her eyes are never still." She attacks the perpetrators with a scythe after learning her three-year old daughter, Miep, has contracted a venereal disease after being raped.
Neitje (Friesen): Agata's teenage granddaughter, whose mother committed suicide after learning of Neitje's rape, and who now lives with Salome. She draws the illustrations needed for the referendum.
Scarface Janz: A stalwart member of the colony. The most vocal of the 'do nothing' women.
Melvin Gerbrandt: Watches over the children while the women talk. Profoundly traumatized after losing a premature son conceived by rape, he changes his name from Nettie to Melvin and falls mute, refusing to speak to anyone but children.
Peters: The bishop of Molotschna. Forbids outside helpers from entering the colony. His father, Peters Senior, excommunicated the Epp family. The belladonna spray is discovered in his dairy barn.
Background
Mennonites started establishing colonies in Bolivia in the late 1950s after the government offered land in the Chiquitano dry forests region north of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and promised exemption from military service, freedom of religion, and the right to dictate the education system.[19] The first settlers came from Paraguayan and Mexican colonies which had been established thirty years earlier by fundamentalist Mennonites who fled Manitoba, Canada when the Canadian government began to enforce its official public-school curriculum.[20] Old Colony Mennonites from Belize and Canada soon followed, and by 2013, Bolivia had 57 Mennonite colonies with a total population of roughly 70,000.[21] The Manitoba Colony, which was founded in 1993 and has a population of over 2000 members, resembles a number of other conservative Mennonite colonies in South America. Colonists wear plain dress and speak Plautdietsch. They travel in horse-drawn buggies, and only men are permitted to leave the colony unaccompanied. Electricity and modern technology are spurned. Any kind of sports activity involving a ball is forbidden. Boys receive an education until puberty, limited to High German, math, and religion. Many also learn Spanish, but intermarrying with any of the local population is strictly forbidden.[22][23]
In August 2011, seven men from the Manitoba Colony were sentenced to 25 years in prison for rape, and an eighth man, Peter Wiebe Wall, a veterinarian, received eight years for supplying the drug used to debilitate the victims. A ninth, Jacob Neudorf Enns, escaped from the Palmasola Prison in Santa Cruz before he could stand trial and remains a fugitive. All the men pleaded not guilty. While 150 women testified during the trial, the prosecution claimed that many hundreds more did not feel comfortable testifying; several of the men on trial were accused of threatening some of the women and their families not to testify.[24] There are reports that the rapes by drugging continue to happen, not only in the Manitoba Colony but elsewhere.[25]
Toews first heard about the rapes in the Manitoba Colony through the "Mennonite grapevine."[1] She said she was horrified by the details of the crimes but not entirely surprised: "Extremist, closed communities are ripe for violence."[26] When in 2009 the rumours were confirmed in the international press, she began to organize her thoughts and figure out how she was going to write about the story.[27] However, before she could begin, her older sister Marjorie died by suicide (in 2010, as their father had 12 years before), and in her grief she wrote All My Puny Sorrows, a novel inspired by her sister. Women Talking came next, and Toews had a complete draft of the manuscript in early 2017.[1]
Toews is herself of Frisian ancestry, a direct descendant of one of Canada's first Mennonite settlers, Klaas Reimer (1837–1906), who arrived in Steinbach, Manitoba in 1874 from what is now modern-day Ukraine. Steinbach's founders are directly related to the colonists in Bolivia, and it is located in the province from which the Bolivian colony derives its name. The personalities of the characters in Women Talking, Toews says, were all based on friends and family members from her hometown.[28] Growing up in a religious, Mennonite town as part of the Kleine Gemeinde church, she witnessed first hand the harm that fundamentalism does to people, especially the truly faithful.[29] In writing the novel, she says, "there was rage and heartbreak mixed with feelings of faith," and that the story contained all the questions she had about her own Mennonite community:[1] "When I became a teenager, I started to understand the profound hypocrisy, the sanctimony, the authoritarianism, this culture of control, or rules, of punishment, all of these things that seemed to me to be so far, far away from the presence of God. It was that conflict that has enraged me for so many years."[27]
Anthony Cummins, writing for The Guardian, called the novel "brave and thoughtful" and praised Toews' "thoughtful and light" prose despite the book's dark subject matter.[18]
Lily Meyer in NPR called the book "astonishing" and a "profoundly intelligent book"; while initially wary of the women's stories being told by a male narrator, she ultimately found that in doing so, Toews' "reverses the patriarchal structure under which these women live".[43]
Women Talking also received positive reviews in the Canadian press, with the Toronto Star calling it "intelligent" and "finely calibrated" and The Globe and Mail praising it for investigating questions "vital" to women.[11][12]
Italian: Donne che parlano. Translated by Maurizia Balmelli. Milan: Marcos y Marcos. 27 September 2018. ISBN9788871688299.
French: Ce qu'elles disent, lit.'What They Say'. Translated by Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagné. Paris: Buchet-Chastel. 22 August 2019. ISBN9782283032725.
Hungarian: Nők beszélgetnek. Translated by Eszter Molnár. Budapest: Európa. 2 September 2019. ISBN9789635040254.
Norwegian: Kvinnene snakker. Translated by Hilde Rød-Larsen. Oslo: Armada. 21 October 2019. ISBN9788293687115.
Spanish: Ellas hablan, lit.'They Speak'. Translated by Julia Osuna Aguilar. Mexico City: Sexto Piso. 24 February 2020. ISBN9788417517755.
Chinese:沒有聲音的女人們; pinyin:Méiyǒu shēngyīn de nǚrénmen; lit.'Women Without Voices'. Translated by Li Jianxing. Taipei: Reading Times. 23 June 2020. ISBN9789571382364.
Turkish: Konuşan Kadınlar. Translated by Gül Korkmaz. Istanbul: Kafka Kitap. 31 March 2022. ISBN9786257994521.
Polish: Głosy kobiet. Translated by Kaja Gucio. Wołowiec: Czarne. 24 August 2022. ISBN9788381915236.
Related Research Articles
Mennonites are a group of Anabaptist Christian communities tracing their roots to the epoch of the Radical Reformation. The name Mennonites is derived from the cleric Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland, part of the Holy Roman Empire, present day Netherlands. Menno Simons became a prominent leader within the wider Anabaptist movement and was a contemporary of Martin Luther (1483–1546) and Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560). Through his writings about the Reformation Simons articulated and formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss Anabaptist founders as well as early teachings of the Mennonites founded on the belief in both the mission and ministry of Jesus. Formal Mennonite beliefs were codified in the Dordrecht Confession of Faith (1632), which affirmed "the baptism of believers only, the washing of the feet as a symbol of servanthood, church discipline, the shunning of the excommunicated, the non-swearing of oaths, marriage within the same church", nonresistance, and in general, more emphasis on "true Christianity" involving "being Christian and obeying Christ" as they interpret it from the Holy Bible.
The Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches (CCMBC) is a Mennonite Brethren denomination in Canada. It is a member of the Mennonite World Conference and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.
The Russian Mennonites are a group of Mennonites who are the descendants of Dutch and North German Anabaptists who settled in the Vistula delta in West Prussia for about 250 years and established colonies in the Russian Empire beginning in 1789. Since the late 19th century, many of them have emigrated to countries which are located throughout the Western Hemisphere. The rest of them were forcibly relocated, so very few of their descendants currently live in the locations of the original colonies. Russian Mennonites are traditionally multilingual but Plautdietsch is their first language as well as their lingua franca. In 2014, there were several hundred thousand Russian Mennonites: about 200,000 live in Germany, 74,122 live in Mexico, 150,000 in Bolivia, 40,000 live in Paraguay, 10,000 live in Belize, tens of thousands of them live in Canada and the US, and a few thousand live in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.
Steinbach is the third-largest city in the province of Manitoba, Canada, and with a population of 17,806, the largest community in the Eastman region. The city, located about 58 km (36 mi) southeast of the provincial capital of Winnipeg, is bordered by the Rural Municipality of Hanover to the north, west, and south, and the Rural Municipality of La Broquerie to the east. Steinbach was first settled by Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonites from Ukraine in 1874, whose descendants continue to have a significant presence in the city today. Steinbach is found on the eastern edge of the Canadian Prairies, while Sandilands Provincial Forest is a short distance east of the city.
Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Toews is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
A Complicated Kindness (2004) is the third novel by Canadian author Miriam Toews. The novel won the Governor General's Award for English Fiction, the CBA Libris Fiction Award, and CBC's Canada Reads.
Mennonite Heritage Village is a museum in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada telling the story of the Low German Mennonites in Canada. The museum contains both an open-air museum open seasonally, and indoor galleries open year-round. Opened in 1967 and expanded significantly since then, the Mennonite Heritage Village is a major tourist attraction in the area and officially designated as a Manitoba Signature Museum and Star Attraction. Approximately 47,000 visitors visit the museum each year.
Silent Light is a 2007 film written and directed by Carlos Reygadas. Filmed in a Mennonite colony close to Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua State, Northern Mexico, Silent Light tells the story of a Mennonite married man who falls in love with another woman, threatening his place in the conservative community. The dialogue is in Plautdietsch, the Low German dialect of the Mennonites. The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 80th Academy Awards, but it did not make the shortlist. The film was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 24th Independent Spirit Awards. It gained nine nominations, including all major categories, in the Ariel Awards, the Mexican national awards.
Kleine Gemeinde is a Mennonite denomination founded in 1812 by Klaas Reimer in the Russian Empire. The current group primarily consists of Plautdietsch-speaking Russian Mennonites in Belize, Mexico and Bolivia, as well as a small presence in Canada and the United States. In 2015 it had some 5,400 baptized members. Most of its Canadian congregations diverged from the others over the latter half of the 20th century and are now called the Evangelical Mennonite Conference.
The Mennonites in Bolivia are among the most traditional and conservative of all Mennonite denominations in Latin America. They are mostly Russian Mennonites of Frisian, Flemish, and Prussian descent. As of 2013, there were about 70,000 Mennonites living in Bolivia; that population has grown to around 150,000 as of 2023.
Turnstone Press is a Canadian literary publisher founded in 1976 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the oldest in Manitoba and among the most respected independent publishers in Canada.
Manitoba Colony is an ultraconservative Mennonite community in the Santa Cruz Department or eastern lowlands of Bolivia. Conservative plain dress Old Colony Mennonites from Mexico and Canada began moving to Bolivia in the 1960s. Manitoba Colony, one of dozens of Mennonite colonies in Bolivia, was founded in 1991 and named after a much larger colony in Mexico, which, in turn, has its origins in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The colony has a population of approximately 2,000. Members of the colony speak Plautdietsch, dress plainly, and do not use electricity or automobiles.
Irma Voth (2011) is the fifth novel by Canadian author Miriam Toews. The novel, about a Mennonite teenager whose life is transformed when a bohemian film crew comes to her settlement to make a film about Mennonites, was informed by Toews' experience as lead actress in Silent Light, the award-winning 2007 film written and directed by Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas.
Andrew Unger is a Canadian novelist and satirist. He is the author of the satirical news website The Unger Review, as well as the novel Once Removed and the collection The Best of the Bonnet.
Mennonite literature emerged in the mid-to-late 20th century as both a literary movement and a distinct genre. Mennonite literature refers to literary works created by or about Mennonites.
Women Talking is a 2022 American drama film written and directed by Sarah Polley. Based on the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews, itself inspired by the gas-facilitated rapes that occurred at the Manitoba Colony, a remote and isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia, the film follows a group of American Mennonite women who discuss their future, following their discovery of the men's history of raping the colony's women. It features an ensemble cast that includes Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw, and Frances McDormand, who also served as a producer on the film. It is the last film to be released by United Artists Releasing, before it was folded into MGM on March 4, 2023.
The Eichenfeld massacre was a 1919 attack against the Mennonite colonists of Eichenfeld by the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine. Rising tensions between the native Ukrainian peasantry and Mennonite landowners had culminated with attacks on the latter, as insurgents took control of southern Ukraine and began carrying out reprisals against those that had collaborated with the Central Powers and the White movement.
The Bolivian Mennonite gas-facilitated rapes refers to mass serial rapes by a group of men over at least four years in the Bolivian Mennonite settlement of Manitoba Colony. At least nine male members of the colony sprayed a veterinary sedative through window screens to render whole households unconscious. They then entered homes and raped the residents, particularly women and girls. The minimum number of known victims stands at 151. Many victims were raped on multiple occasions. The youngest victim was three years old, the oldest was 65. Multiple victims were pregnant and one delivered an extremely premature baby after going into labor following a rape. There are believed to have been both adult and child male victims as well, but none were publicly identified. The perpetrators were in some cases blood relatives of the victims, the crimes thus including incestuous abuse.
Once Removed is a novel by Canadian author Andrew Unger published in 2020. Published by Turnstone Press, the book is a satire set in the fictional town of Edenfeld, Manitoba and tells the story of Timothy Heppner, a ghostwriter trying to preserve the history of his small Mennonite town.
East Village is a fictional town in the Canadian province of Manitoba, frequently used as a setting in novels by Miriam Toews. The town was based on Toews's real-life hometown of Steinbach. East Village appears in A Complicated Kindness and All My Puny Sorrows as well as the film adaptation of All My Puny Sorrows. Toews also refers to Steinbach in Fight Night and her nonfiction work Swing Low.
↑ Reed, Sabrina (2022). Lives Lived, Lives Imagined: Landscapes of Resilience in the Works of Miriam Toews. University of Manitoba Press. pp.115–7. ISBN978-1-77284-009-4.
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