Talking with Miriam Toews about Women Talking
“My novel is just one small part of a conversation that can’t be silenced.”
Miriam Toews grew up in a Mennonite community in Manitoba, Canada. Her novels include A Complicated Kindness, All My Puny Sorrows, and Irma Voth, and she played a leading role in the 2007 film Silent Light. Her new novel, Women Talking, imagines the aftermath of a real-life event: the ongoing, systematic rapes of girls and women in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia that were perpetrated and covered up by the men of the community.
What do you see as the benefits of growing up in a small, close-knit community? What messages about God, humanity, and the world did your town’s Mennonite identity instill in you?
I had a great childhood. I roamed freely all around the town. Everyone knew who my parents were, who my grandparents were, and where I lived. There was a certain comfort in that, at least when I was a kid.
