Women Talking: A Story That Demands to Be Heard

When I first read Women Talking by Miriam Toews in May 2024, I was struck by its raw honesty and the depth of its questions about faith, obedience, and freedom. It’s a story that lingers long after the last page—a story about women who have been silenced for generations, told they must submit to men to gain salvation and entry into heaven. Their entire lives were built on obedience, on the belief that speaking up was forbidden.

This weekend, I finally watched the film adaptation. I had heard that the movie changed the portrayal of the women, and indeed, the setting felt different. The book takes place in Bolivia, and in my mind, I pictured women with darker skin living in an isolated colony, far removed from the world—perhaps deep in the Amazon. The movie, however, felt like Pennsylvania farmland, with women who looked like those in traditional U.S. Mennonite communities. At first, this shift unsettled me. I thought the setting would matter more. But as the story unfolded, the location faded away. What remained was the truth—the voices of women who had been denied their humanity.

Both the book and the movie are powerful because they center on the same question: What do you do when your faith demands forgiveness, but your soul cries out for justice? The women gather in a hayloft to decide their future: stay and submit, fight, or leave. Their conversations are urgent, tender, and revolutionary.

One line from the book has stayed with me:
“Freedom is good... it’s better than slavery. And forgiveness is good, better than revenge. And hope for the unknown is good, better than hatred of the familiar.”
This quote captures the tension between hope and fear, between the comfort of what we know and the terrifying possibility of change.

The movie echoes this theme with a line that reflects Mennonite pacifism:
“It is a part of our faith to forgive. We have always forgiven those who have wronged us. Why not now?”
But the women ask: Is forgiveness that is coerced true forgiveness? And what does it mean to forgive when the violence is unspeakable?

When the credits rolled, I sat in silence, just as I had after finishing the book. The story is not just about Mennonite women—it’s about all women who have been silenced, treated as property, denied agency. It’s about the courage to speak, to dream, to choose freedom even when the cost is everything you’ve ever known.

This story needs to be shared because oppression thrives in silence. And when women talk—really talk—they begin to change the world.

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