The real story of 'They speak': girls, mothers and grandmothers raped in a Mennonite colony

• 'They speak' The story of the Mennonite maid: 100 rapes of women and girls in a remote community

• Interview Miriam Toews: "When my sister committed suicide I decided to stop writing, then I needed to tell our story"

Eight women meet in secret to decide what they should do.

They have just discovered that for years several men from their same Mennonite community, in a remote and isolated place, have been

while they slept, after subduing them with an anesthetic for animals.

They believed they were in a paradise away from human pettiness and discover that they live with "the devil", as some of them said.

That is the story of

, the book by

published in Spain in 2020 by Sexto Piso, and the real story discovered in 2009 in a Bolivian colony of 2,000 people of this branch of Anabaptism.

"I wanted to write the book because, after learning about the attacks in the Manitoba colony, many questions arose," the Canadian author explains to EL MUNDO.

“I was horrified, like everyone else, to hear about these violations, although

.

Above all, I wanted to imagine what women would do in response to rape, and why and how."

To know more

Cinema.

Sarah Polley: "Behind the attacks on a woman is the power structure that makes them possible"

• Writing: LUIS MARTÍNEZ Madrid

Sarah Polley: "Behind the attacks on a woman is the power structure that makes them possible"

Eight men were convicted of the rape and sexual abuse of 151 women and girls,

.

They woke up in the morning still affected by anesthesia, naked and with pain in their genitals, although it took them years to denounce it due to the very closure of their community.

Toews was born and raised in a Mennonite population and has devoted much of her work to that experience.

When I started writing decades ago, I didn't know how powerful a force it was in my psyche.

Now I see that

, in my memory, in my perspective, in my writing, in everything.

It is what I am”, says the novelist, who explains that there are different types of Mennonite communities.

The writer Miriam Toews.

"There are liberal and urban colonies and others that are very conservative and closed like Bolivia," he says.

“These closed colonies are patriarchal, authoritarian and extremely strict.

But there is not just one way to be a Mennonite, there are different degrees of conservatism, in dress and in gender rules and roles.

My mother, for example, belongs to a very welcoming, progressive and modern Mennonite church in downtown Toronto.”

His mother, by the way, is portrayed in the mother's own character in his novel

, written based on the suicides of his sister and his father and published in Spain last year, also by Sexto Piso.

Toews believes that suicidal ideation "runs in families" and has a strong genetic component.

But he does attribute to Mennonite communities a tendency to cause "depression and mental illness" in their members.

They Talk

has elements reminiscent of

, and indeed,

herself enthusiastically praised the novel.

Now the film adaptation also contains that repressive aroma.

"I love the Sarah Polley movie," says Miriam Toews.

«What I value most about her is how she shows that we can come together, democratically, and, through dialogue and reflection, decide ways to change our lives, to change our world and show a way out of abuse, whatever that may

. abuse," he concludes.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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• bolivian

• literature

• novel

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• sexual assaults

• sexual abuse

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