Miriam Toews is the best-selling and award-winning author of eight books, including her most recent work, Women Talking -- the heartbreaking, philosophical, and funny account of female crime victims defining justice for themselves. It is both a good story, and the kind of good story that gets into the marrow of readers: the kind for which Toews is renowned. On today's show, Toews discusses the making of Women Talking, the challenges of leaving but continuing to love her former Mennonite community, and her certainty that literacy is freedom.
[Theme music: I've Chosen Love, by Reed Turchi]
Reginald Dwayne Betts: There's somebody in like, you know, Sydney, Australia, right now with a book in their hand that's thinking about the world along the same lines of the conversation that we're having.
Jason Reynolds: It's literally us manipulating and maneuvering 26 letters into different arrangements that might just liberate somebody.
Miriam Toews: Literacy is, is freedom.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: And so, so many people was yelling, you know, and it was wild to me. I was like, "And this is literature right here." You know what I mean? I was like, "This is the importance of books."
You're listening to. The Freedom Takes. I'm your host, Reginald Dwayne Betts.
Elsa Hardy: And I'm your co-host, Elsa Hardy.
Reginald Dwayne Betts: Today we're pleased to be joined by Miriam Toews. Mariam is the best-selling and award-winning author of eight books, including her most recent work of fiction, Women Talking. Miriam is a writer that makes a reader's world more capacious and their understanding less narrow. She writes good stories with the kind of characters that follow you around during your days, reminding you of something and questioning you, as well. There is telling a story, and there's telling a story that gets into the marrow of readers. Miriam does the latter, and we are all better for it. Thanks for joining us, Miriam.
Miriam Toews: Thanks for having me on this, on this podcast. I really appreciate it.
Hardy: So we like to open up these shows with a reading from the book that we're featuring, which as Dwayne said, in this case, is Women Talking. Miriam, can you introduce the novel and read a bit from it for our listeners?
Toews: Sure. I have to get my glasses on.
So, um, Women Talking, it's an imagined response to a series of attacks, a series of rapes that occurred in a, a Mennonite colony in Bolivia between the years 2005 and 2009. I'm a Mennonite. I've written about Mennonites before and about my own Mennonite community. So, when I heard about these attacks, I was horrified like everybody, but I knew that I wanted to write something about it, and I didn't know exactly what it was, and I decided that I would basically put a bunch of victims of the attacks into a barn, a loft in the colony, which is where it's set and have them basically discussing what they'll do in response to these attacks. And that's basically what the book is about. And I'm going to read from the beginning of the book.
The meetings have been organized hastily by Agata Friesen and Greta Loewen in response to the strange attacks that have haunted the women of Molotschna for the past several years. Since 2005, nearly every girl and woman has been raped by what many in the colony believe to be ghosts or Satan, supposedly as punishment for their sins.
The attacks occurred at night. As their families slept, the girls and women were made unconscious with a spray of the anesthetic used on our farm animals, made from the Belladonna plant. The next morning, they would wake up in pain, groggy, and often bleeding and not understand why. Recently, the eight demons responsible for the attacks turned out to be real men from Molotschna, many of whom are the close relatives--brothers, cousins, uncles, nephews--of the women. I recognized one of the men, barely. He and I had played together when we were children. He knew the names of all the planets, or he made them up, anyway. His nickname for me was Froag which in our language meant question.
I remember that I had wanted to say goodbye to this boy before I left the colony with my parents, but my mother told me that he was having difficulty with his 12-year-old molars and had contracted an infection and was confined to his bedroom. I'm not sure now, if that was true. In any case, neither this boy, nor anybody from the colony said goodbye before we left.
The other perpetrators are much younger than me and hadn't been born or were babies or toddlers when I left with my parents, and I have no recollection of them. Molotschna, like all our colonies, is self-policed. Initially, Peters plan to lock them in, in a shed, similar to the one I live in, for several decades. But it soon became apparent that the men's lives were in danger. Ona's younger sister, Salome, attacked one of the men with a scythe, and another man was hanged by a group of drunk and angry colonists, male relatives of the victims, from a tree branch by his hands. He died there, forgotten apparently, when the drunk and angry men passed out in the sorghum field next to the tree. After this, Peters, together with the elders, decided to call in the police and have the men arrested, for their own safety, presumably, and taken to the city. The remaining men of the colony, except for the senile or decrepit, and myself, for humiliating reasons, have gone to the city to post bail for the imprisoned attackers in the hope that they will be able to return to Molotschna while they await trial. And when the perpetrators return, the women of Molotschna will be given the opportunity to forgive these men, thus guaranteeing everyone's place in heaven. If the women don't forgive the men, says Peters, the women will have to leave the colony for the outside world, of which they know nothing. The women have very little time, only two days to organize their response. Yesterday, as I have been told by Ona, the women of Molotschna voted. There were three options on the ballot. One, do nothing. Two, stay and fight. Three, leave. Each option was accompanied by an illustration of its meaning because the women do not read. It's not my intention to constantly point out that the women do not read, only when it's necessary to explain certain actions. Nietzsche Friesen, age 16, daughter of the late Mina Friesen, and now permanent word of her aunt, Salome Friesen--Nietzsche's father, Balthazar, was sent by Peters to the remote Southwest corner of the country some years ago to purchase 12 yearlings and still has not returned--created the illustrations.
Do nothing was accompanied by an empty horizon, although I think but did not say that this could be used to illustrate the option of leaving, as well. Stay and fight was accompanied by a drawing of two colony members engaged in a bloody knife duel, deemed too violent by the others, but the meaning is clear. And the option of leave was accompanied by a drawing of the rear end of a horse. Again, I thought but did not say, that this implies the women are watching others leave. The vote was a deadlock between numbers two and three: bloody knife dual and back of horse. The Friesen women, predominantly, want to stay and fight. The Loewens prefer to leave, although evidence of shifting convictions exists in both camps. There're also some women in Molotschna who voted to do nothing, to leave things in the hands of the Lord, but they will not be in attendance today. The most vocal of the Do Nothing Women is Scarface Jants, a stalwart member of the colony, the resident bonesetter, and also women known for having an excellent eye for measuring distances. She once explained to me that, as a Molotschnan, she had everything she wanted. All she had to do was convinced herself that she wanted very little.
Betts: Oh, this is such a beautiful and heartbreaking book. And, you know, even listening to you read that part, and it's August talking, but what I find most interesting and compelling is still the voices of the women, and I just wonder, where did those voices come from?
Toews: I think the voices came from the women that I've known all my life. I just remember from my childhood, and, and even now, still, you know, the, the conversations that we would have in my community, my Mennonite community, which was a very conservative, religious, fundamentalists colony. The women were so separated from the men. Our roles were so rigid. And so, we were often together, you know, communal stuff going on, and so there was a lot of talk. A lot of laughter, a lot of joking around, a lot of anger expressed, a lot of feelings. That kind of feeling and emotion was sort of frowned on by the church, but when we women got together, you know, it was there, and it was expressed. And so I just tried to remember that and apply that kind of, um, I don't know, the way of talking that I remembered from my Mennonite relatives to the women in the book.
Hardy: When it actually came time to develop those eight specific characters, did you meet the individual characters as you wrote, or did you already have an idea of like, who Salome was going to be, for example, when you started writing? They're a monolith, you know, like the women, um, women talking, but they're also really profoundly individual.
Betts: That's, that's a craft question right there. That's, that's like an interesting craft question. We about to learn how to, how to characterize.
Toews: Yeah, the challenge was definitely trying to keep the voices distinct. Their life experiences are the same. It's, uh, you know, again, a collective community. For the older women, uh, I thought of my own mother and the mother of a good friend of mine, all Mennonites. For the next generation, I thought of myself. I thought of myself as Salome, at least in terms of [laughs] a lot of her strong feelings. And I thought of my own sister, my late sister, um, as the character of Ona, Salome's sister, and Salome's more measured, and sort of calm, wise, sister. You know, I have kids, I mean, I have daughters. And for the young, so for the younger girls, it really was as simple as that, just kind of applying those types of personalities to the women.
Hardy: So I'm curious, why and how you chose to narrate the book in the way that you did, the decision to have August as a narrator?
Betts: And August, just cause, um, it'll be some people who don't know these, these women, they get to talking, and because they aren't literate and they need somebody to write it down, they kind of pull August into the fold to be the secretary. Which, I'm my class secretary, so I was kind of feeling like August, and I think he played an important role as like the scribe, you know.
Toews: Like you say, the women are illiterate, so when I decided that the context of the book would be the minutes of these meetings, I knew that, you know, that would just necessarily require a man in the barn, or at least somebody who knew how to write. August is somebody very much like my own father, who was a teacher, who suffered deeply, deeply, who was mocked by his own community as being effeminate, not a real man, because he was a teacher. He was in--he was educated. He was, um, interested in books and, and reading and, and writing, and in my community, I mean, you know, that was something that people were suspicious of and also dismissive of. One of the women in the, in the loft, Ona, really senses that August is despairing, that August is actually suicidal, and basically she says to him, listen, August, just come to the loft. Here, we'll give you this task, you know, we don't know how to read and write. We're having meetings. You can write down what we say. And so basically they're trying to protect August and saying, listen, you'll, you'll be safe with us, at least for the time that you're in the loft with us, so just come with us, and we'll give you this thing to do. And then in the end--
Betts: No, you can't tell the end! [laughs]
Toews: But also, and also August, in my mind, you know, he kind of occupies this liminal space, you know, between the outside world and this very closed world that the women are in, and in my mind anyway, represents all men in that he's there to listen, he's there to learn. And the roles have sort of been reversed. The women are the philosophers and the planners and the thinkers and the doers, and he's there, you know, as a secretary to, to write it all down,
Betts: See, this is why I love this book because now I need to read it again because I missed that, and it might've just been in a line or two, but in terms of how you use craft the situate one way a reader might understand August, which is, the women were saving him. But you also just mentioned that the women were the philosophers, and I deeply believe that this is a, a philosophical book, and I wonder, you know, the first, the first sort of philosophical move you make, I think, is that we never explicitly, um, see the violence that the women and the children suffer from, though we still felt the violence. But I liked it because it shifted the focus away from the brutality towards the tenderness amongst the women. And I guess I wanted to have you talk a little bit about, about that decision since it seems so, so fundamental about, you know, what women talk about when, when nobody is listening.
Toews: Yeah, I didn't, I didn't want to recreate the rapes. To me, that seemed almost like a kind of re-violation of the women. And you know what, I wanted to show, too, that obviously this book is about the girls and the women and the nature of these patriarchal communities, where the males are so entitled and the women are, are silent victims, essentially, but I also wanted to show how this kind of community affects the male psyche, as well. I mean, how much would that destroy one's soul to be one of the perpetrators, to be one of the rapists, you know, to get to that place where you feel so entitled, where you feel this is your right. The male psyche is damaged profoundly within these kinds of communities, as well. But yeah, I guess I just, I just wanted to make a small point of that in the book, you know, that, that really everybody, everybody suffers.
Betts: That kind of makes me think of, um, you know, these women are in a loft, and they're sort of discussing what they will do, whether it's like fight or leave. But part of the discussion just reveals was how the community had turned in some ways into a kind of prison for the women. And I'm, like, reluctant to say that because, having, having been to prison, I'm always like conscious of, um, the way in which metaphors fail. And in the book, you know, it failed. I mean, people love the people the people they were leaving. They love their children. There was some young boys that was among the perpetrators. I mean, they loved their husbands. So I'm, I'm reluctant to say that, but the women seem, in some ways, not, not to really feel like, um, it was agency for them in staying in that place. I wondered if you would just speak a bit about the tension between, you know, what others would name of, of our lives and how we choose the name it since, I mean, that seemed to be what the women were doing in that loft, like, like taking agency for themselves to say what this is.
Toews: Yeah, absolutely. They had to take agency for themselves, and they have, you know, their, their, their manifesto, they jokingly refer to it, you know, with their three concerns. And that is that whatever decision they make, they want to keep their faith, protect their children, and they want to think--that agency that you're talking about. And so within those three points, they have to make their decision, and so they're grappling with this idea of, are they disobeying their husbands? Are they disobeying the church by even contemplating leaving the community? Is this a sin? If they don't want to stay and forgive the men, is that a sin? What does forgiveness mean? Et cetera. So they're making this really urgent, high-stakes decision within the context of their faith, really, which is so important to them. It's everything, together with the, with protecting their, their children, of course, and so, you know, and they talk about that, and they talk about that. But I have a great deal of respect for the women, you know, in the real communities, these real Mennonite communities, my own included, for the women and the men that who stay. And particularly, in these ultra-conservative colonies, the outside world is unknown. For the women in the book, I mean, the idea of leaving--they don't know where they would be going. You know, there, there are a lot of women who have come up to me, women who are still living in these closed, Mennonite communities, who come to see me when I do readings, who somehow have managed to get their husbands--it would have to be their husbands or their sons or their brothers or their fathers--to drive them to, to the city, to the town where I'm doing a reading. They will come in, quickly come to me, give me a quick hug, whisper something in my ear, like "Thank you for writing this," and then they leave. They immediately go, right? Their husbands are waiting for them outside in the car. But these are women who stay. I respect that. It was very important to me that that comes across in the book, too. It's just, it's just a very, very difficult thing to leave. And it takes a long time, if ever, to finally find a place in the outside world, really. You know, I think for people who leave these colonies, you know, it's often a sort of lifetime of living in a little bit of a limbo between that close community and the modern world.
Hardy: Right. I'm also curious, you self-identified in the beginning of this conversation as a Mennonite, and you've referred to it as "my community" a few times throughout our conversation, and yet, you've said that a lot of people are really angry at you for writing this book, and--
Toews: And all my other books, as well.
Hardy: And there's a lot of criticism in it. And so I wonder how you hold both of those things? It, it sounds like you still have love for this community. It's, like, shaped who you are. And yet, you also are not fond of a lot of elements, at least of the more conservative Mennonite community, so how do you hold both of those things to be true at the same time?
Toews: I mean, it, it's so complex, right? I mean, the people that I love most in this world are Mennonites. You know, I think of myself as a secular Mennonite. My mother, who lives with Eric and me, lives downstairs on the main floor. She's, she's very much a believer. Uh, I mean, you know, her friends come over, they're singing hymns and praying together and laughing. And, you know, I I'm here on the second floor, and I hear all of that, and it just makes me want to just cry with, uh, I don't know, a type of nostalgia, I guess, you know, just a type of, um, joy, a bittersweet, like you say, you know, it's, it's my world. It's what I'm used to, that kind of worshiping together with others, worshiping something bigger than yourself. When, when you put the, the rules, you know, that sort of discipline of this culture, this culture of control. When you, when you throw that into the mix, it all goes to seed. All the beauty of that kind of community, of that kind of solidarity, that sort of collective, you know, working together, taking care of each other, worshiping together, it all falls apart. It can't be sustained. And I am a Mennonite, you know, I, uh, And I, I have a lot of Mennonite support, like a lot, a lot of support from the Mennonite community and a lot of people within the Mennonite community, mostly men, who definitely, um, do, do hate me and would prefer that I were silent and stopped writing.
Hardy: I'd like to return to something that we touched on a little earlier about the decision to have August as a narrator. What that means is that we're hearing the women's thoughts filtered through a man's mind and a man's voice. And so in this way, you're kind of having to contend with patriarchy, even when you're hearing the first-person testimonies of these women. And so I'm wondering why you chose to narrate the book in this way, like using the minutes, rather than having an omniscient narrator or even telling it from the perspective of one of the women?
Toews: I mean, it's a really good question, and it's kind of hard to explain, you know, I wanted the book to be a bunch of women in a barn talking about what they were going to do in response to these rapes. And then just because the women are illiterate, it seemed that it would have to be, you know, somebody who could write and in this community, it's always a man. But because they can't read and write, and because I wanted it to be the minutes--I wanted the content of the book to be a document that in the end would prove to be irrelevant. That, for whatever reason, that was important to me as a writer, and the power of words and the efficacy of words that, yes, words are important, words have saved us. Writing has saved us. Writing has saved my life. Writing books, as we know, Dwayne, I mean, they save--they literally save our lives. And yet, they're only words. They're only books. And throughout my writing, so-called career, I'm grappling with the feeling of this kind of useless endeavor, writing books, book after book after book. And yet, it's the only thing that I feel compelled to do. And in fact, if I didn't do it, I I'd go crazy. Really, you know, I wouldn't be alive, you know? So, so, in that way, I wanted it to be a document that would be, in the end, kind of play to that, the idea of it being important, but not important.
Betts: That makes me wonder, like, one of the questions that the book raises is that, like, August never says, um, I'm gonna make copies of this and get this to all the men, you know. Like this is the book, this is the account. And that, I think we respect how like writing saves us. And I think we also respect how it could touch others. I just don't know why that was, um, lost on August. And I, and I don't know why he stayed. Or I should say why he didn't go with the women, might be a better way to phrase that last part.
Toews: Yeah, because he was kind of tasked, in a sense, uh, you know, is tasked in a sense, in the end, with teaching the boys. He's a teacher. He has to reeducate these boys, tell them what it is, and everything has to start again, you know, this kind of education. He loves these women. He knows he can't go with them, and that, more importantly, he knows he's needed in the community to reeducate the boys and hopefully, you know, teach the men that there's another way for them to be.
Hardy: That didn't occur to me, that that was why he didn't leave, so that, you know, because men can stop rape. And, you know, I'm a historian, and so, I was so excited once I realized that these were minutes and that this was a document that was going to be preserved because August was effectively helping them to create an archival record. And women's stories are often absent from archives, and I love the idea that they were resisting that absence in this fictional world. But then at the end, when he tries to give the minutes to Salome, and she's like, what am I supposed to do with this? And so August concludes that the words are futile, there's no purpose other than to basically keep him alive for a few more days was how I read it. So, I just didn't know what to make of that conclusion because the women did seem concerned about what was being written down. There was one moment where nobody was talking, and August was writing, and somebody was like, wait, but what are you writing down? Yeah. And, and Salome does ultimately take them with her. I went back to check. So do you believe, um, August when he says that the words were futile, or was it your intention to kind of leave that open for readers to disagree? Or does it feel settled in your mind that they didn't have a purpose?
Toews: Definitely to leave it open for readers to, you know, decide for themselves. Absolutely. But I think that August needs this, this document, you know, not necessarily the document itself, but everything that he's learned from having created the document. And at the same time, I mean, the magnitude of this kind of, um, abuse, this kind of thinking, you know, in terms of men and women and girls and boys within these types of communities, these fundamentalists, authoritarian, patriarchal, isolated communities that I think that August--and the women, of course, and me--you know, we all, we all feel that, um, how are we going to change this? How are we going to change 600 years of tradition? You know, of women as silent, uh, victims and men as entitled, you know, um, perpetrators? I mean, but at the same time, like you say, if we don't start, you know, and if we don't start together with men making changes, and if that doesn't begin with thinking, and if that thinking doesn't lead to something being written down and then being archived and being a part of history and women's stories, you know, then, then what do we do? It's just a start, you know, it's just one small piece of the, of the broader conversation around these subjects of men and women and sexual violence and rape. But the question was, you know, does August feel that futility? Yes, he does. Absolutely. I mean, August feels the futility of being alive. And I think that we all do if we're honest, but what else can we do? You know, what else can we do, but begin? By thinking, by getting together by talking, by writing something down.
Betts: I, I've talked to like, um, like a lot of people in, and I won't presume to know what it means to be from a Mennonite community and leave, but I do think I know what it means to have spent like a bunch of time in prison and to leave, and sort of what I feel is like all of my writing is about prison. I feel like I literally cannot escape it. It's the center of my prose, it's the center of my poetry, and I know that the thing I'm struggling to write about is grief. And, um, and sort of just listening to you talk, and listening to you, run through the world of what it means to come from a Mennonite community, I wonder how you approach this question of grief and also wonder if you feel like, um, vis-a-vis your position as somebody who left and who was a writer and a thinker, do you find yourself, um, differently obsessed with it than, than others? Or do you even find yourself obsessed with it?
Toews: Yeah, I'm obsessed with my community. I've tried not to be. I've tried to tell myself, that's it, stop writing about this place, for God's sake, you've, you've written enough about it, and you know. But I can't help it. So, you know, maybe it's like a similar thing and I'm, I'm not comparing, obviously, my experience to yours in prison, but, but I think a lot of my stuff, I think a lot of my writing is about the idea of escape. Just escape, in general, not even necessarily literally from that community, but escaping one's mind or escaping one's body. But, but, um, but the idea of grief is something that I think is a parallel thing running, running with that, you know, I left, I left my community when I was. 18. I had, you know, completed school in my community. Uh, it wasn't an ultra-conservative colony, like the one in Bolivia, where the girls weren't educated. I was educated. You know, you can say permanent, you know, for what that's worth. And, um, but it was, um, I mean, leaving, leaving my community was, um, you know, it was very difficult. I was, you know, I was ex-communicated. I was kicked out of the church. Uh, the grief, like you, you know, the way that you described this, of leaving a community like that, everything that I know, everything that I've experienced. I mean, there, there are a lot of beautiful aspects of living in a communal setting, where everything is, you know, explained the way for you. I mean, the idea of a higher education, or of thinking, or of rebelling or of questioning the church or the, or the tenants of the, of the church, or the elders of the ministers, you just don't do it. So there's a sense of security in that kind of a life. Obviously, I knew you know, early on in my adolescence that I could never stay in a community like that and be free or be an artist, be a writer, and that I had to leave. And then, and, and that's it, it is, I mean, there's a lot of grief attached to that. It's loss, you know, loss of my, of my home, of my community. I can't go back.
Hardy: One of my good friends who's a writertaught me to always read the acknowledgements section of every book that I read. And in yours, you write that you wish to acknowledge the girls and women living in patriarchal, authoritarian, Mennonite, and non-Mennonite communities across the globe, love and solidarity. And for some reason, it occurred to me when I read those words that leaving wouldn't automatically make the Molotschnan women free from patriarchy and authoritarianism because both exist in the world outside of Molotschna, even if to a lesser degree. And that made me kind of sad for them and for all of us. So, do you believe that women can ever truly be free?
Toews: Well, or can any one of us ever truly be free? That is, that is a very good question. That is the question. And, um, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I guess it depends what, how we, how we define freedom. When you're a traditional Mennonite and a religious Mennonite, you're trying to find a place where you can exist and live, you know, according to your religious faith, outside of government pressure. This is a reason for a lot of the problems that occur in these colonies, obviously, but it's, it's this never-ending quest for, you know, for a type of freedom, religious freedom. And, and obviously I believe in, you know, one's, one's freedom to practice one's religion, but that doesn't mean that you also have the freedom to rape and attack women. You know, for the men in their, in, in these communities, it's often framed as, well, look, now we're free, we're, we've got our little colony here. We're free. We're cooperative. We do our thing, but of course, you know, it still is a prison, of sorts, a virtual prison for the women, for the girls and the women, who don't speak the language of the country that they're in, they don't leave the colony, they're dependent on the men in the community for everything, basically. So, and like you say, I mean, this kind of world exists everywhere, downtown Toronto. I mean, you know, we're wearing different clothing and maybe practicing a different type of faith, you know. It's a dangerous world. It's a dangerous world for girls and women, and for, you know, for a lot of men, too, obviously, but-- is there freedom? I don't know. What are the women leaving? You know, I mean, in the book, there's this idea that every direction that they might take holds some sort of danger, and I think that's true. And that's a cynical kind of hopeless thing to say, that there is no place in this world where we'll be free, where we'll be free of attack, but we need to be realistic.
Betts: I think so much of your story is also this lesson about, about utopias. And, and, um, and so I think about, like, just, yeah, it just makes me think deeply and seriously about how we, sometimes we imagine that the utopia solves the problems, when, when the problems are, like, men need to stop raping women. That's the agenda. You know, the agenda is not necessarily, you don't need a rule book for that, you know, and I feel like in our own, I mean, I feel like in here in New Haven, I mean, I just feel like it's just a deeply and profound problem, um, around crime and violence and the harm we inflict upon others. And so often, we imagine that it's a product of the state or the, or like the governmental structure. And it's just a product of the state and the governmental structure not working with the people within that space to stop the inclination to harm each other.
Toews: Absolutely. And it has to do with education and with legislation and with women and or men going forward in a safe place to say, this is what happened to me, you know, with a, with the justice system, for instance, and with, you know, that, that nightmare, that people, women experience when they attempt to, to go forward to, to talk. And, um, I think that, you know, I mean, and the sense of entitlement within these, these communities, these fundamentalists, you know, authoritarian communities is so, is so strong, and it's sanctioned by the elders within the church, and then it's sanctioned, they believe, by God. I mean, in the Bible, it says, you know, um, you know, "Women submit to your husbands. Children, submit to your fathers." And, and this is taken literally, you know, in a, in a fundamentalist approach, and, and, um, you know, so, so there's, there's very little recourse.
Betts: But this is, like, not unlike, I mean, the thinking that drives this is really not unlike what made me imagine that I could just pull out a pistol and take somebody's car. I think that's what I found really like profound about the book is I connected to, to what is August's responsibility going forward? I connected to this notion that it's a kind of violence that we accept because we don't want to confront it. And I lived, you know, for a long time amongst folks who like, that wasn't all of who we were, but, but that was so much of the center of our understanding of the world. And, and I did feel like, reading this, that you were confronting something that is like terribly difficult to write about because it's terribly difficult to admit out loud. One version of this is, is that I could just hear everything you saying, and, and circumscribe it to the Mennonite community. But, but the other version is, you know, I think about the piece I just wrote about my mom being assaulted by somebody who lived in my neighborhood, you know, who was in my community. And like the stories that my mom's telling me about, you know, all of the times that she's been like robbed or attacked or threatened, it's always been by Black men. And we don't live in a, um, you know, rural, Mennonite community. Like we will live in Suitland, and so, I really appreciate this conversation, and, um, I hate to switch gears and ask you both something as mundane and boring as reading, but, but we have to ask you, how does uh reading influence your writing life?
Toews: I guess, uh, you know, I've always said that I think I would be okay in life if I had, you know, doesn't matter where I live or where I am, if I had one friend and a library card, I think I'd be okay. I think that's all that I actually need. So, but, um, when I was a kid, reading was everything. My, my dad was a teacher. He believed in reading and writing. Uh, he taught me how to read. When I was a little kid, I would get, I would get bored, and he would, you know, ask me, give me these assignments. Hey, why don't you write something for me? It could be anything, you know, just anything, just write a paragraph of whatever. And I'd write something, and he'd give me an A+, like he would pretend to sort of mull over it, and like, well, yup! And then, you know, big A+ and circle it. And, you know, and he was bringing books in, into the house, and my mother read to me until I was, uh, 12 years old, 13 years old. I just loved it. I loved it so much. I loved listening to her read to me, even though, by then, you know, I could, I could have read the books myself, obviously, but it was, I mean. It's my, it's my whole life. It's my whole life is, is reading and writing. I think, you know, we could get rid of the writing part, you know, as long as I can keep reading.
Betts: Yeah, no, no, definitely. Me--I guess, I follow up and say, um, okay. Uh, actually, Elsa, you jump in, and I need to figure out how to formulate this next question. I got it in my head, but it's like on the tip of my tongue.
Hardy: I was just going to ask if there is a book that you can think of, in particular--
Betts: No, you can't ask!
Hardy: What? That's literally my question! [laughs]
Betts: [laughs] Elsa you, no you ask your, you asked the question.
Hardy: See, he admits it's my question. Um [laughs]. So, Miriam, is there one book, in particular, that changed your life or how you thought about the world?
Toews: Absolutely, and specifically, it was, it was Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I had a teacher in high school, an exceptional person in that community, sort of similar to my own father. I don't even know what his real name was. We all called him Bambi, and he was such an anomaly in that community. And he was the first person who gave us, us kids, you know, in this backward place, real literature. And it was Grapes of Wrath. It was Dostoevsky. It was Virginia Wolf. Literally, it just blew my mind. And there's a scene in Grapes of Wrath that I talk about often, because Rosa Sharn, you know, this character, she's pregnant, and they're starving. And the, the Joad family is moving to California. It's the Dust Bowl, the Depression, and they're, they're all starving and desperate. And, um, you know, she, she loses her baby, but she still has milk in her breasts. And, uh, and they're traveling together with, uh, a starving, an old, starving man. And he, you know, she feeds him, um, and gives him life. And I read that for the first time, you know, I was, I was 16 years old, and I could not believe that something like this had, first of all, been imagined, you know, imagined and then composed, and it was something that I could read and, you know, the empathy, the compassion, the horror of that particular scene. I mean, literature, you know. I had never experienced anything like that really, really in my life. I had read books, but you know, I hadn't, I hadn't read something so fine.
Hardy: So we like to ask all of our guests, this question. Frederick Douglass said that "When we read, we become forever free." What does that mean to you? And how do you think about the relationship between reading and freedom?
Toews: He's, he's absolutely right. And I feel that. I, I, I agree. Literacy is, is freedom, you know. We leave the worlds that we are in, whether, whether we're prisoners in them, literally or not, whether we feel imprisoned in them, whether our souls are somehow imprisoned in them, we leave these worlds, and, uh, and we enter other worlds. We're suddenly in community with the characters in a book, you know, and with the writer of the book, whether we ever meet that writer or not, it's a conversation, you're not alone. We read to know that we're not alone. And in that is a freedom. It's a feeling of being alive. And I, and I, and I feel too that this whole idea of reading, I mean, this cruel action of not teaching children, particularly girls in certain cultures, how to read. I mean, what does that tell you? I mean, is that another way of imprisoning them? Of course it is. Is that another way of limiting their opportunities, um, to, to think to, uh, formulate ideas of their own, to relate to other people out in the world? Of course it is. And it's cruel. So yeah, absolutely reading, reading is freedom, and the best kind.
Betts: Miriam, it's, this has been, like, a true joy and a pleasure and an honor to have you join me and Elsa for a few minutes. It has been the greatest, most delightful 30, 40 minutes that we spent during the pandemic, at least I've spent, um, in quite some time, so, um, I thank you.
Toews: You're, you're so welcome. It's, it's uh, it's my pleasure. And thank you so much for having me on, on the show, and, uh, yeah, it's just great to meet you.
[Music: I've Chosen Love, by Reed Turchi]
Betts: Thanks for joining us for The Freedom Takes, a new podcast from The Million Book Project. We'll be back next time with another contemporary writer. You can find out more about The Million Book Project and subscribe to our newsletter at law.yale.edu/justice-collaboratory. Our initiative was made possible by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This podcast was produced by Erin Slomski-Pritz with theme music by Reed Turchi. Production assistance was provided by Elsa Hardy, Tess Wheelwright, and Molly Aunger.