A Time To Speak

In Miriam Toews’s new novel, women in an isolated Mennonite colony debate how to move forward in the aftermath of sexual assault

- Casey Plett

IN THE opening note to her new novel, Miriam Toews informs us that about a decade ago, in a remote Bolivian community of Mennonites who’d immigrated from Manitoba, “hundreds of girls and women would wake up in the morning feeling drowsy and in pain, their bodies bruised and bleeding, having been attacked in the night.” The attacks, which went on for years, were initially attributed to demons. “Eventually, it was revealed that eight men from the colony had been using an animal anesthetic to knock their victims unconscious and rape them.” The men were later jailed, but reports of attacks and sexual assaults have continued. Her book, Toews explains, is an imagined reaction to these real-world events.

Women Talking takes place in a fictionalized colony called Molotschna, an ultraconservative Mennonite community that exists apart from its unnamed country. The girls and women of Molotschna were victims of nightly attacks, like the real women in Bolivia, and the perpetrators have been arrested. At the start of the book, the women of the colony have gathered alone, the able-bodied men having travelled to the city to bail out the rapists. The women know that, when the men return in two days’ time, they will be told by their church leader to forgive their attackers — to absolve the men so they will be allowed into heaven and also to save their own souls, as bestowing forgiveness is a mandate of their faith. This is the breaking point for most of the women, and they vote on how to respond: they can do nothing, they can stay and fight, or they can leave. Some choose the first option, but the rest deadlock. Eight women from two families, the Friesens and the Loewens, are then selected to meet in a hayloft and decide the group’s collective future.