The Mennonite community of East Village has separated themselves from the outside world to keep their traditions and beliefs strict for its members and keep outsiders from interfering. Miriam Toews presents Nomi Nickel as the narrator to view the community of East Village from the perspective of an insider who recognizes issues and examines them. Toews’s writing, specifically from Nomi’s point of view, allows the audience to examine the culture from the insider’s standpoint. Their views and practices affect Nomi in such a way that she questions and eventually, rebels against the Mennonite lifestyle. All the while, she still harbors some affection for her upbringing, as she frequently has flashbacks to her life as an obedient Mennonite child.
Toews’s own Mennonite background shapes how she views the entire Mennonite community and affects how she writes about them. She presents the anxieties of the community about being a minority group, …show more content…
In Nomi Nickel’s case, her boundary is not only the walls of East Village, but the border between Canada and the United States. Early in A Complicated Kindness, she expresses her desire to leave her hometown of East Village and move to the East Village in New York. Nomi mentions the model village outside of the town frequently. The presence of the fake Mennonite village, at which many people in town work, represents the Mennonites clinging to the past. They choose to appear to tourists as a community that still operates the way it did in the 18th century. Nomi’s longing for the East Village in New York demonstrates her contempt for the way the community still lives in the past. “Nomi Nickel associates East Village somewhat subversively with its homonym in New York City, the hotbed of the 1960s counterculture which the young narrator embraces enthusiastically as an antidote against Mennonite disregard for the present” (Omhovère,
Toews’s own Mennonite background shapes how she views the entire Mennonite community and affects how she writes about them. She presents the anxieties of the community about being a minority group, …show more content…
In Nomi Nickel’s case, her boundary is not only the walls of East Village, but the border between Canada and the United States. Early in A Complicated Kindness, she expresses her desire to leave her hometown of East Village and move to the East Village in New York. Nomi mentions the model village outside of the town frequently. The presence of the fake Mennonite village, at which many people in town work, represents the Mennonites clinging to the past. They choose to appear to tourists as a community that still operates the way it did in the 18th century. Nomi’s longing for the East Village in New York demonstrates her contempt for the way the community still lives in the past. “Nomi Nickel associates East Village somewhat subversively with its homonym in New York City, the hotbed of the 1960s counterculture which the young narrator embraces enthusiastically as an antidote against Mennonite disregard for the present” (Omhovère,