2025-11-17
41 分钟He did ask, what would be so bad about staying here?
And I remember just joking and challenging him in the way that, you know, a 17-year-old would.
You want me to marry, you know, so-and-so and get a job at Penner Foods.
I remember saying, well, you know me, dad.
I mean, do you really see me being happy here?
There's a town on the flat expanses of the Canadian prairies where faith runs deep.
There's no train station to link it to the outside world,
and on Sunday mornings, nothing but the sound of hymns being sung.
It's here in Steinbach Manitoba that Miriam Taves grew up, a sharp,
funny, restless girl in a stifling conservative society that prized obedience and silence.
Sometimes Miriam's devout father, Mel, took that literally.
He would go for long periods without speaking at home.
But at the school where he taught, he was a whirlwind.
Bipolar disorder was the diagnosis.
Miriam's mother, Elvira, was in many ways his opposite.
She filled the home with laughter and resistance.
From that place came one of Canada's most distinctive literary voices.
This is the story of how a girl from a strict Mennonite town broke its silence to tell the stories her community couldn't bear to speak aloud.
I'm Jo Fidgen, and from the BBC World Service, this is Life's Less Ordinary.
Miriam's parents' first language, like a lot of people in Steinbeck,