Women Talking (2018)
Women Talking is a 2018 mennonites, fiction book written by Miriam Toews.
In a remote Mennonite colony, eight women climb to a hayloft to do something the colony has never allowed them: decide for themselves. Over two years, they and more than a hundred others were drugged and assaulted in their sleep by men from their own community, and now, with those men away for two days to post bail, the women have a narrow window to act. Illiterate and cut off from the world outside, they debate whether to stay, to fight, or to leave everything they know. Miriam Toews shapes their argument, drawn from real events, into a fierce and unexpectedly funny meeting of minds.
Quick answers
What is Women Talking about?
In a remote Mennonite colony, eight women climb to a hayloft to do something the colony has never allowed them: decide for themselves. Over two years, they and more than a hundred others were drugged and assaulted in their sleep by men from their own community, and now, with those men away for two days to post bail, the women have a narrow window to act. Illiterate and cut off from the world outside, they debate whether to stay, to fight, or to leave everything they know. Miriam Toews shapes their argument, drawn from real events, into a fierce and unexpectedly funny meeting of minds.
When was Women Talking published?
Women Talking was published in 2018.
Who made Women Talking?
Women Talking was written by Miriam Toews.
A few thoughts on Women Talking
This story of women reasoning their way toward freedom pairs with Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, another reckoning with control over women's bodies. Tara Westover's memoir Educated shares the pull between a closed religious world and the life beyond it, and the film Spotlight matches the moral weight of an institution protecting its own.