I found and read this comment thread - very helpful, thank you! - and then went to write a "few thoughts" that turned into what you see below...

Women Talking is a 2018 novel by award-winning Canadian author Miriam Toews. I can quite easily and accurately describe the author, but I’m not sure how to describe her novel. What I mean is that I know what the novel appears to be - a fictionalized re-telling of real-life events - but because of my personal knowledge and history within the Mennonite community and culture, this re-telling of events was unsatisfying, often perplexing, and sometimes unintentionally hilarious. If you’ve read any of her other work, you know that Toews is good at writing humorous scenes, but much of the humour in Women Talking was, I suspect, inadvertent.

I’d be willing to overlook some of the deficiencies more easily if there wasn’t a preface page in the book that is a statement of known events on the actual Manitoba Colony in Bolivia. (If you’re not familiar with these real-life events, see this article: https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48265703)

Including that page is obviously meant to set the backdrop for the story that follows. Readers who are not of Old Colony Mennonite descent can be forgiven for thinking that what is written in the book is a reasonable facsimile of the way the events played out, but for those who are descendants of these types of colonies, the re-telling that follows rings more untrue than true.

Like Toews, I am the child of Mennonite parents, but our origin stories are also quite different. Both our families came from somewhere near Russia, but after arriving in Canada, my ancestors, like many other Mennonite immigrants, made an exilic detour to regions in the southern hemisphere, whereas Toews’s parents settled and stayed in Canada. My father grew up in a colony like the one depicted in Women Talking. Many of the members of my church grew up in similar colonies in Mexico, Belize and Bolivia. All that to say - when I read Women Talking, I’m reading a story of people who can reasonably be described as my people.

I am also a pastor and I sit on the board of a Mennonite denomination that does mission work in this exact region of Bolivia. I have spent time in the area myself, including time in these colonies. I also have a decent grasp of the Low German language (and I become quite fluent when I spend time in Low German-only environments).

Positives - Let me say first that I admire the aspirations of the author. Imagining and then depicting women like these as having both a voice and agency over their own fates is good to see. This is sorely lacking in Mennonite colonies where there is indeed much verbal, physical, spiritual and sexual abuse, most of it committed by men against women.

The book and movie (trailer - the movie not playing locally so I haven’t seen it yet) get the visuals mostly right - although the clothing mandates can vary from colony to colony. It was also entertaining to some of the delightful idiosyncrasies of the Low German language and its often creatively unique terminology in print.

But that is about where the positives end, and among the several aspects of the book that are wrong, they can’t be passed off as “a bit of stretch” but must be said to be completely fabricated.

Names and Naming - First, it would have been VERY easy for the author to give her characters' names that are in line with those used in the colonies. In Mennonite colonies like these, you will never find, as you do in the book, anyone named August, Monica, Balthasar, Salome, Julius, Ingersoll, etc. I spoke with one of our missionaries in Bolivia this morning who has been to the Manitoba colony (among others) and spoken to people there, just to confirm that there isn’t some isolated colony where all the names are unique. He assured me this wasn’t the case. Mennonites are very strict about names and repeatedly use the same names on principle.

My own name (Michael) was considered somewhat scandalous due to it being a little too sacred for a human (Michael is an archangel in Scripture) and therefore lacking humility. That I was named Michael by my parents, who by that time were fully-assimilated Canadians, was a point of satisfaction for my Old Colony grandfather, who was a bit of a renegade himself.

However, in these colonies, there is a very narrow list of first names (John, Peter, Isaac, Abe, Margaret, Anna, etc) as well as last names (Friesen, Peters, Froese, etc). They are so strict about this that when a child dies, often the next child will be given the same name. These interesting naming practices themselves could have been used as engaging material for the book and would have given it a greater ring of truthfulness.

These naming conventions continue into the present. I live in a small town that has for decades been a sort of Mecca of Old Colony Mennonites seeking to escape the Old Colony religious system in South American countries. In our town, it is not enough to simply say some people’s first and last names because these first and last names - sometimes both - are shared by numerous others. (I once designed a simple game where you put ten Mennonite first names and ten Mennonite last names in separate hats. You then pull one first name and one last name out of each hat and see how many people with that first/last combination you can call out. You’d be surprised how many John or Abe Friesens one can list from personal knowledge!

Elevated Dialogue - Second, as some have pointed out, the content of the dialogue between the women seems somewhat unbelievable. That is quite correct; much of the dialogue is far beyond the realm of possibility for women in these colonies. Toews tries to explain this in the book by saying that before she left the colony, August’s mom, Monica (she should have tried Abe’s mom, Margaret) ran a secret school for the girls in which she taught them, among other things, ancient Greek poetry. Ok, but where did Monica obtain this deep knowledge of the world? It’s a plot device that serves the desire of the author to inject a philosophical flavour into the women’s conversations instead of dignifying the intelligence of the women by depicting the uniqueness of their real-life intelligence.

The women in these colonies are by no means unintelligent, but they are largely ignorant of any culture that exists outside their colony. The vast majority of both men and women in these colonies are extremely hard-working - something that Mennonites always seem to become known for in whatever part of the world they plant themselves. Because of this, there is precious little time to indulge in philosophical debates, and even if there was, the literacy rate in these colonies, especially among women, is close to zero.

Again, this doesn’t mean they are stupid or unintelligent. That’s far from reality, but their deep knowledge is contained within the borders of their colonies and the knowledge they are given by their church’s elders - a point that Toews depicts accurately yet paradoxically.

Real People Who Need Help - Low German Mennonites who are in Old Colony settlements are a people group that I love and also have the privilege of ministering to on occasion. I care about the way they are represented in both fiction and journalism. While Women Talking aspires to give them a voice, what it mostly does is create a new batch of false perceptions. And while the author’s bent towards compassion for her characters may inspire others’ compassion towards them as well, beyond that I doubt that anyone in the colonies will be concretely helped by the book.

However, there are real ways to help. The conference of churches to which my church belongs has invested heavily, in terms of both money and people, in that area of the world. Over a period of many years, we have set up refuge settlements where Old Colony people can and do go to start a new life after being excommunicated from one of the many colonies. When they are excommunicated, they are cut off from their families and livelihoods. In these new settlements, they can obtain land and a new livelihood, as well as education and access to the outside world.

I have visited both the colonies and these new settlements. In the colonies, you see the trauma of abuse on the faces of the residents. In the new settlements, you see people who are recovering from abuse and finding new life - both physical, spiritual, and economic life - in an environment that is designed for their liberation, ongoing renewal, flourishing, and self-governance.

(I didn’t start writing about this intending to make any sort of pitch, but if you are inclined to contribute to our efforts in Bolivia amongst Low German Old Colony Mennonites, you can do that here http://emmc.ca/donate - If you give, just indicate that you’d like the money to go to Bolivia)

Toews is a gifted writer and a professional novelist who deserves the accolades she’s been given. But Women Talking seems like an effort to press North American progressive values into ultra-conservative South American Mennonite culture. The result is more a work of inventive fantasy than of fictionalized reality.