I finished Women Talking last month and I've been thinking about it a lot. It's a novel by Miriam Towes about a Mennonite colony in South America that has experience the trauma of drugged nighttime rapes of the women by the men and boys they love, depend on, and trust. When the book begins the rapes have already happened, have been discovered, and the men are now asking the women to forgive them so they can move on as a community. The women have been meeting to decided collectively if they will
1) do nothing
2) leave or
3) stay and forgive.
They do not know how to write, they do not speak Spanish or English, they don't have much of a formal education, so leaving is daunting. They invite a man who rejoined the colony after the rapes to document and take meeting notes for them, since they cannot, and he, it turns out, is the narrator of the book. I thought it was an interesting choice to have a male point of view for this, and although he is a sympathetic character towards the women, his deep love and desire for one of them, his being raised in the colony, and his being a man means that you must always as a reader remember that this story is being told through a warped lens.
This is the narrators recollection of talking with a librarian in Europe, after his family was banished from the colony and after he had received a more mainstream education and a grander perspective outside of the conservative lens of Mennonitism. He is a child, and is explaining that he had stolen something and was still haunted by his actions:
“I asked if I could put back the stones after god had found me, and punished me. I was so exhausted from anticipating punishment, and I wanted to get it over with.” 20:37
Why do I feel this way all the time? This seems to be a thing with people from intense religions or abusive childhoods, but I wasn't in either of those things.
