Mennonite #MeToo in Molotschna: Women Talking by Miriam Toews

Mennonites are a staple where I live. I often see their horse-drawn carriages as I'm driving into the market, and at the market I will see them at stalls selling things like maple syrup or vegetables. They're the perfect resource here in town if you're looking for a whole hog for a pig roast or live edge wood for a charcuterie board. And even in our modern grocery stores and hardware stores on the edge of town, in the back corner of their massive parking lot you'll often find an open-air stable for the Mennonites to park their horses. And if you're thinking Amish, you're sort of in the same ballpark. That's Old Order Mennonites. We've got a ton of New Order Mennonites here in town as well, and they're basically modern-day Christians. They teach at our schools, they drive cars, they could be your next-door neighbor, and they're perfectly adequate to have a beer with on the weekend. But back to the Old Order Mennonites. All right, back to the Old Order. There is a Mennonite community in the lowlands of Bolivia of about 2,500 people. It's called Manitoba Colony. In the mid-2000s, women in this colony were waking up in a daze with a headache. Their bedsheets soiled with dirt, blood, and semen. Their bedclothes torn. So naturally the women are crazy, wild female imagination, or maybe trying to hide an illicit affair. And this is only after they started talking to each other. For a long time they kept quiet because they had no idea other families were experiencing similar things. It was only when the women started talking that they realized they shared similar experiences. And again, it was probably demons, a plague from God, big shrug emoji from the town elders. I mean, what are you gonna do? It took two men being caught trying to break into a neighbor's house, and upon being caught quickly started naming names, which led to the arrest of nine men ranging from the age of 19 to 43 that were basically breaking in and raping women in the colony. They were using a veterinarian spray used to anesthetize cows to drug entire families. I think all told there was 130 victims, and the nine men were sentenced to 25 years in jail. So all good, problem solved. Did I mention that the victims ranged in ages of three to 65? And yet the town elders thought the matter settled, that the women should just pretend that it never happened and just move on with their lives. They even refused help from progressive Mennonites in Canada that had offered to send counselors down to help these women deal with this. But the elders were like, no, no, no, this is just some foul ploy to try and attract sheep and pull them away from the flock and, you know, adopt more progressive ways. And meanwhile, the rapes and abuse continued, but at least there were consequences. I mean, perpetrators were caught, they were excommunicated for about a week, then welcomed back into the community as long as they promised never to do that again. And if you're younger, you're simply baptized and asked for forgiveness. We Canadians, polite to a fault, but damn if we don't go heavy on the hard stuff. Miriam Tapes reads about the story and thinks, yes, I need to write about that. Now, to be fair, she did grow up Mennonite in a small town called Steinbeck in the province that the Bolivian Mennonite community was named after, Manitoba, Canada. So, in her book, Women Talking, she has these women of an imagined colony called Molochna having to decide what to do in the aftermath. The men have been jailed, but they are returning to the colony in 48 hours, and the town elder has insisted the women must forgive these men, these rapists, lest they damn them to hell and therefore incur the wrath of God. And therefore, the town elder would have no choice but to excommunicate the women. So, the women, as far as they're concerned, have three choices. Do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. It's Mennonite Me Too in Molochna. And so, eight women from three generations of two families gather in a barn loft to decide what they're going to do. And with them is a lone man, August Epp. He's a teacher in the colony, educated outside of the community, but still looked down by the men and many of the women in the colonies, considered effeminate because of his inability to till a field or eviscerate a hog. And frankly, he likes ducks besides. Reminds me of a book. Anyway, his job is to simply stay quiet, listen to the women, and write down what they say. Taves does an incredible job playing at notions of justice, retribution, forgiveness, grace, and the according conversations of these women, which are at turns funny, warm, hopeful, and exasperating. These women, they roll their eyes, they snip at each other, they argue, they yell, they offer comfort to each other in turn. But the action is kept mostly in that barn loft. So, it's like a gender-bent Mennonite 12 Angry Men. And it's crazy-making. Women arguing for their options within this patriarchal system that has completely stacked the deck against them. The game is rigged. There are no good outcomes. What choice do these women have? And they're still trying to play by the rules. The men have been caught and cleared. But what justice is there for the women? If they stay, how do they not kill these men? How do they maintain this mandate to pacifism? And if they leave, do they get to take their sons? What will become of them? How do they ensure that the next generation doesn't simply repeat this process? How do they become better men? And why is all the emotional labor theirs to bear? And in this way, women talking just seems so timely and resonant. You have this environment right now where Brett Kavanaugh sits on the Supreme Court and complains about his occasional fine dining outing marred by a sneering remark by an angry woman at a nearby table. Meanwhile, Christine Blasey Ford has had to move four times. Her email has been hacked. She's received death threats. She still hasn't returned to teaching and, frankly, is still wary of coming out into public. Or you have Brock Turner who has avoided having to pay a steep price for what his father deemed 20 minutes of action. Simply served three months of his total six month sentences out into the public working again. Fine, fine, fine, fine. I mean, this is why women talking is so compelling. Compelling enough that Brad Pitt is already optioned for a movie. Frances McDormand is already attached to it. It's also been put on stage. I saw a live table read in Toronto when I came into town. No big deal. It's also making a ton of year and best of lists. Well deserved. And frankly, it is nice to see another Canadian author on those lists that isn't Margaret Atwood. But if women talking isn't enough of an emotional gut punch, you really need to check out Megan Gale Call's Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club. Another fantastic Canadian read. It is Newfie Me Too. It is dark. It is hopeless and compelling. Easily one of my favorite reads of the year. But man, it is heavy hitting, hard read. Anyway, Merry Christmas if you celebrate. Happy New Year if I don't talk to you before then. Otherwise, I hope you all have a great week of reading and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.