Miriam Toews

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Template:Short description Template:Infobox writer Miriam Toews (Template:IPAc-en; born May 21, 1964) Template:Post-nominals is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Toews is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

Toews had a leading role in the feature film Silent Light, written and directed by Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas, and winner of the 2007 Cannes Jury Prize, an experience that informed her fifth novel, Irma Voth (2011).

Toews lives in Toronto and is an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto in the Faculty of Arts & Science.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Early life

Toews grew up in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada the second daughter of Mennonite parents, both part of the Kleine Gemeinde. Through her father, Melvin C. Toews, she is a direct descendant of one of Steinbach's first settlers, Klaas R. Reimer (1837–1906), who arrived in Manitoba in 1874 from Ukraine.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Her mother, Elvira Loewen, is a daughter of the late C. T. Loewen, an entrepreneur who founded a lumber business that would become Loewen Windows.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Beloved New Yorker">Template:Cite magazine</ref> As a teenager, Toews rode horses and took part in provincial dressage and barrel-racing competitions and attended high school at the Steinbach Regional Secondary School. In 2024, a historic plaque was placed in front of Toews's teenage home in Steinbach.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Toews left Steinbach at eighteen, living in Montreal and London before settling in Winnipeg. She has a B.A. in Film Studies from the University of Manitoba, and a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of King's College, Halifax.

Career

Early work

Toews wrote her first novel, Summer of My Amazing Luck (1996), while working as a freelance journalist. The novel explores the evolving friendship of two single mothers in a Winnipeg public housing complex. The novel was developed from a documentary that Toews was preparing for CBC Radio on the subject of welfare mothers.<ref name="Beloved New Yorker" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. Toews won the latter prize with her second novel, A Boy of Good Breeding (1998).

Toews has written for CBC's WireTap, Canadian Geographic, Geist, The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, Intelligent Life, and Saturday Night. In 1999, she won a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Humour.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She is the author of The X Letters, a series of personal dispatches addressed to the father of her son, which were featured on This American Life in an episode about missing parents.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Toews' father died by suicide in 1998.<ref name="Beloved New Yorker" /> His death inspired Toews to write a memoir in her father's voice, Swing Low: A Life. The book was greeted as an instant classic in the modern literature on mental illness, and it won the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award.<ref name="barber">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

A Complicated Kindness

Toews' third novel, A Complicated Kindness (2004), is set in East Village, a small religious Mennonite town much like her native Steinbach. The narrator is Nomi Nickel, a curious, defiant, sardonic sixteen-year-old who dreams of hanging out with Lou Reed in the 'real' East Village of New York City. She lives alone with her doleful father, after the departure of her older sister and the unexplained disappearance of her mother. Unlike her father, who is a dutiful member of the church, Nomi is rebellious by nature, and her questioning brings her into conflict with the town's various authorities, most notably Hans Rosenfeldt, the sanctimonious church pastor.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

A Complicated Kindness was highly acclaimed nationally and internationally, with the character of Nomi Nickel invoking comparisons to J. D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It won the 2004 Governor General's Award for Fiction, described by the jury as "an unforgettable coming-of-age story... melancholic and hopeful, as beautifully complicated as life itself."<ref name="Toews, Dallaire">Template:Cite news</ref> It was also shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The novel was selected for the 2006 edition of Canada Reads, the first book by a female writer to win the competition.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The Flying Troutmans

The Flying Troutmans (2008) is a road-trip novel narrated by 28-year-old Hattie, who takes charge of her teenage niece and nephew after her sister Min is admitted to a psychiatric ward. Overwhelmed by the responsibility, Hattie enacts an ill-conceived plan to find the kids' long-lost father in California.

The novel was awarded the 2008 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. The jury described the novel as "a love song to young people trying to navigate the volcanic world of adult emotions."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The novel was also longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and named a Globe and Mail Best Book.

Irma Voth and Silent Light

With her fifth novel, Irma Voth (2011), Toews returned to the Mennonite community to reexamine the ways in which religious communities can limit personal freedom, and how belonging can turn to estrangement when old and new value systems clash. The novel opens in an old-order Mennonite settlement in Mexico's Chihuahuan Desert. Nineteen-year-old Irma Voth has been banished to a neighbouring farm by her strict, religious father after secretly marrying a non-Mennonite Mexican. Her new husband disappears into the drug trade and Irma is left alone to tend to the farm. Her world is transformed when a film-maker from Mexico City arrives to make a film about Mennonites. Irma is hired as a translator for the film's female protagonist, and her involvement with the wildly creative film crew brings her into dangerous conflict with her father, while at the same time helping her better understand her place in the world. When her father's violence escalates and the tragedy that has haunted her family begins to surface, Irma receives the blessing of her mother to flee the encampment, and to take her two younger sisters with her, one of whom is an infant. They eventually settle in Mexico City, where the two older sisters must embrace the ways of the city in order to survive and raise their infant sister.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Toews has said that Irma Voth was inspired in part by her experience in playing a lead role in Silent Light, the 2007 film written and directed by Mexican film-maker Carlos Reygadas. Reygadas invited Toews to do a screen test for the role of Esther, a conservative Mennonite wife, after reading her third novel, A Complicated Kindness, and seeing her author photo on the back flap of the book. The film was shot in Plautdietsch, a language neither the director nor Toews fully understood.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Toews worked with her mother, a native speaker of Plautdietsch, to deliver her lines phonetically. The film won a number of international awards, including the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Toews was nominated for Best Actress at Mexico's Ariel Awards for her performance, one of nine nominations for the film.<ref name="variety">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Filmed in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, the film depicts the same Mennonite community that features in Toews' novel. "Irma Voth and Silent Light provide interesting counterpoint views of a culture as seen through the eyes of an outsider. Of course Reygadas and the fictional film-maker in Irma Voth portray a society within its insular context, a culture out of time and place, while Toews and Irma Voth have learned to exist in both worlds."<ref name="Catherine Wall">Template:Cite journal</ref>

All My Puny Sorrows

All My Puny Sorrows (2014) recounts the tumultuous relationship of the Von Riesen sisters, Elfrieda and Yolandi, the only children of an intellectual, free-spirited family from a conservative Mennonite community. Yolandi, the novel's narrator, has always lived in her sister's shadow. Whereas Elfrieda is a gifted, beautiful, happily married, and much celebrated concert pianist, Yolandi feels like a failure, with a floundering writing career and teenage children from separate fathers.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Yet it is Elfrieda who suffers from acute depression and a desire to die, much like her father before her, who killed himself by stepping in front of a train. When Elfrieda makes a second suicide attempt on the eve of an international concert tour, Yolandi makes it her mission to save her sister, even as Elf begs her to accompany her to a Swiss clinic and enable her death.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Yolandi writes: "She wanted to die and I wanted her to live and we were enemies who loved each other."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Toews has said that the novel draws heavily on events leading up to the 2010 suicide of her only sibling Marjorie.<ref name="Grdn2018"/><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

All My Puny Sorrows received starred reviews in Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly and was a Reference and Users Services Association Notable Book.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It also appeared on a number of year-end best-book lists, including The Globe and Mail,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Boston Globe,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Washington Post,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The New Republic,<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> and The Daily Telegraph.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The novel won the 2014 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. The jury described it as "a haunting novel of tremendous feeling, beautifully written and profoundly humane... Miriam Toews, a dazzling literary alchemist who manages to summon all the joyous and heart-breaking humanity of her characters, has produced a work of astonishing depth. Reading it is an unforgettable experience."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The novel was also awarded Italy's 2015 Sinbad Prize for Foreign Fiction.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

All My Puny Sorrows was shortlisted for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> the 2015 Folio Prize for Literature,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and the 2015 Wellcome Book Prize.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It was longlisted for the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The novel's French translation, Pauvres petits chagrins, was selected for the 2019 edition of Quebec's Le Combat des livres, where it was defended by writer Deni Ellis Béchard.<ref name=combat>"5 combattants dans le ring du Combat national des livres". Ici Radio-Canada, April 8, 2019.</ref>

A film adaptation of the book, directed by Michael McGowan, was released in 2021.<ref>Johanna Schneller, "Exquisite adaptation of Miriam Toews’ All My Puny Sorrows will pierce your heart". The Globe and Mail, April 13, 2022.</ref>

Women Talking

In a note at the start of Women Talking (2018), Toews describes the novel as "a reaction through fiction" to the historical events that took place between 2005 and 2009 on the Manitoba Colony, a remote Mennonite community in Bolivia. Girls and women would regularly wake up in the mornings to discover they had been sexually violated. The attacks were dismissed as "wild female imagination", or else attributed to ghosts or demons. Eventually it was discovered that a group of colony men had been spraying an anesthetic into neighboring houses at night, rendering everyone unconscious, and raping the women (infants, the elderly and close relatives included). The colony elders, deciding that the case was too difficult to handle themselves, called local police to take the perpetrators into custody.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Toews' novel centers on eight women of varying ages who, in the aftermath of such traumatic events, must determine what to do next. As they see it, they have three options: do nothing; stay and fight; or leave. The stakes are high, and they must come to a decision quickly. The colony men, who are away to post bail for the rapists, will soon be returning. Over the course of two days, in the privacy of a hayloft, the women have a series of fierce philosophical debates. They discuss how they will heal, protect their children, educate their sons, keep their faith, and forgive. The colony's bishop, Peters, has told them that if they refuse to forgive their offenders, they will be denied entry into heaven.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The novel is presented as the minutes of the women's meetings, which are taken by August Epp, the colony school-teacher (and the novel's narrator) who has returned to the community after being excommunicated. Unlike the women, he has experience of the outside world, and is able to read and write and speak English (the women speak only Plautdietsch, an unwritten dialect of East Low German). He performs his role of minute taker at the request of Ona Friesen, the object of his unrequited love and his childhood friend, who is one of the eight women in the hayloft. As time runs short for the women, and they begin to put their action plan into motion, August's story is also revealed.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The novel was a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction at the 2018 Governor General's Awards,<ref>"Miriam Toews, Rawi Hage in running for $25,000 Governor General's fiction prize". Toronto Star, October 3, 2018</ref> and for the 2019 Trillium Book Award.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

A film adaptation of the book, directed by Sarah Polley, and produced by and featuring Frances McDormand, Rooney Mara, and Claire Foy, was released in late 2022.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> At the 95th Academy Awards, Polley won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for her adaptation of Toews' novel.<ref>2023|Oscars.org</ref>

Fight Night

Toews' eighth novel, Fight Night (2021), focuses on a multigenerational family of women living in Toronto: the feisty, tomboyish nine-year-old Swiv, her heavily pregnant mother (nicknamed Mooshie), and her spirited and extraordinarily lively grandmother Elvira. Recently expelled from school, Swiv helps her grandmother with bathing and chores, accompanies her around the city, and eventually travels with her to Fresno, California to meet members of their extended family. In exchange, Swiv learns about what it means to survive through the ups and downs of life, and of her grandmother's story of despair, betrayal, stolen agency, and joy. The novel's structure takes the form of a letter Swiv writes to her absent father about life in the close-knit (yet often dysfunctional) household. As Swiv records her thoughts and observations, Fight Night unspools the pain, laughter, and unconditional love in the three women's stories as they speak to what it takes to fight – painfully, joyously and ferociously – and survive in life.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Personal life

Toews' father, Melvin C. Toews, suffered from bipolar disorder much of his life. He was an active and well-respected elementary school teacher who lobbied to establish Steinbach's first public library. After his death by suicide, the Steinbach Library Board opened the Melvin C. Toews Reading Garden on the grounds of the library he worked to create.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Toews' older sister and only sibling, Marjorie, died by suicide in 2010, almost twelve years to the day after their father.<ref name="Grdn2018">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Toews' partner is Erik Rutherford,<ref>Eric Volmers, "Crowded House: Miriam Toews mixes laughter and tragedy, darkness and light in new novel, Fight Night". Calgary Herald, August 20, 2021.</ref> the screenwriter for the 2021 film Charlotte. Her daughter, Georgia Toews, and son, Owen Toews, are both writers. Georgia's debut novel, Hey, Good Luck Out There, was published in 2022,<ref>Robert J. Wiersema "Georgia Toews’ debut novel: Breaking down, throwing up in a realistic story of addiction and survival". Toronto Star, June 1, 2022</ref> while Owen's Stolen City: Racial Capitalism and the Making of Winnipeg was published in 2019.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Bibliography

Filmography

Year Title Director Actor Consultant Notes
2007 Luz silenciosa Carlos Reygadas Template:Yes Template:No Role: Esther
2021 All My Puny Sorrows Michael McGowan Template:No Template:No Based on the novel of the same name.
2022 Women Talking Sarah Polley Template:No Template:Yes Based on the novel of the same name.

Selected awards and honours

Notes and references

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