Women talking | Miriam Toews

Résumé : 

One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.

While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women—all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in—have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they’ve ever known or should they dare to escape?

Based on real events and told through the “minutes” of the women’s all-female symposium, Toews’s masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide.

Voici une traduction personnelle du résumé ci-dessus :

Extrait : 

JUNE 6

August Epp, Before the Meeting

My name is August Epp—irrelevant for all purposes, other than that I’ve been appointed the minute-taker for the women’s meetings because the women are illiterate and unable to do it themselves. And as these are the minutes, and I the minute-taker (and as I am a schoolteacher and daily instruct my students to do the same), I feel my name should be included at the top of the page together with the date. Ona Friesen, also of the Molotschna Colony, is the woman who asked me if I’d take the minutes—although she didn’t use the word “minutes” but rather asked if I would record the meetings and create a document pertaining to them.

We had this conversation last evening, standing on the dirt path between her house and the shed where I’ve been lodged since returning to the colony seven months ago. (A temporary arrangement, according to Peters, the bishop of Molotschna. “Temporary” could mean any length of time because Peters isn’t committed to a conventional understanding of hours and days. We’re here, or in heaven, for an eternity, and that’s all we need to know. The main houses in the colony are for families, and I’m alone, so it is possible I may always, forever, live in the shed, which doesn’t really bother me. It’s bigger than a jail cell and large enough for me and a horse.)

Ona and I avoided the shadows as we spoke. Once, in mid-sentence, the wind caught her skirt and I felt its hem graze my leg. We side-stepped into the sun, again and then again, as the shadows lengthened, until the sunlight had disappeared and Ona laughed and waved her fist at the setting sun, calling it a traitor, a coward. I grappled with the idea of explaining hemispheres to her, how we are required to share the sun with other parts of the world, that if one were to observe the earth from outer space one could see as many as fifteen sunsets and sunrises in a day—and that perhaps by sharing the sun the world could learn to share everything, learn that everything belonged to everyone! But instead I nodded. Yes, the sun is a coward. Like myself. (I kept silent, too, because it was this tendency of mine to believe, with such exuberance, that we could all share everything that landed me in prison not long ago.) The truth is, I don’t have a catchy method of conversing and yet, unfortunately, suffer on a minute-to-minute basis the agony of the unexpressed thought.

Voici une traduction personnelle de l'extrait ci-dessus :

Extrait

Mon avis : 

Quasi coup de cœur pour ce roman ! Je l'ai trouvé très intéressant et très fort. Par contre, trigger warnings : viol, oppression religieuse et machisme. J'ai aimé voir ces femmes se réappropriées leur liberté de penser et de choisir pour elles-mêmes. J'ai aimé voir leur révolte se confronter à leur morale religieuse. J'ai été bouleversée par les actes atroces commis par les hommes de cette communauté religieuse, qui sont malheureusement basés sur des faits réels. J'ai aimé que l'autrice donne une voix et de la visibilité à ces femmes Mennonites qui n'ont probablement pas souvent le droit de se faire entendre...

Au niveau du rythme, c'est un livre plutôt lent avec très peu d'actions. On vit l'instant présent avec ces femmes, leur questionnements et leurs points de vues face à cette grande question sur laquelle repose l'intrigue : doivent-elles quitter leur communauté et s'installer ailleurs ou pardonner et rester auprès d'hommes qui les maltraitent et les violent, elles et leurs filles ?

J'ai adoré tous les personnages, les femmes présentées sont toutes différentes, avec des personnalités et des opinions aussi riches que variées. Le narrateur est lui aussi très intéressant. Le seul petit bémol que je pourrais soulevé ici, c'est que le narrateur et porte-parole de toutes ces femmes oppressées soit un homme... Ca fait un peu "oh l'homme ce sauveur", le livre aurait gagné en "empowerment" avec une narratrice et porte-parole féminine. Cela n'entache en rien la qualité du récit cependant.

Bref, j'ai adoré ce roman, je l'ai trouvé extrêmement puissant et j'ai presque envie de le relire. Je suis un peu jalouse des deux traducteurs français qui ont eu la chance de travailler sur ce roman, car je crois que j'aurais adoré le faire ! Plongez sans hésiter dans ce roman fort, ce petit bijou de réflexion et d'empowerment qu'a écrit Miriam Toews.

Ma note :

17/20

Infos complémentaires :

Genre : Contemporain

Editions : Bloomsbury
Date de parution : 2019

Nombre de pages : 240

Une version française existe aux éditions Buchet/Chastel sous le titre Ce qu'elles disent, traduit par Lori Saint-Martin et Paul Gagné.