In A Complicated Kindness, despite the strictness of the Mennonite community, most of the teenagers in East Village act pretty typically. Consider Nomi’s description of Adeline Ratzlaff on page 184. Despite this, Adeline plays the role of a traditional Mennonite wife at the museum for tourists (Travis, Nomi’s drug-smoking boyfriend, plays the husband). What do these contradictions suggest about the reality of life in East Village? Why are some punished for bad behavior (with excommunication) while others aren’t?

In several places in A Complicated Kindness, Nomi remarks upon the staged enactments of Mennonite life in the village created for the tourists and how this staged village does not truly represent the real community of East Village. Certainly, Travis and Adeline Ratzlaff, who once "brought brass knuckles to school and beat another girl" for wearing clothes in her style, are anything but the devout and simplistic Mennonites they pretend to be when they are dressed as a woman who rocks a baby and her husband who reads a Bible as they stage an exhibition for tourists. For instance, in Chapter 22, when Nomi drives up to see Travis, she finds Adeline and Travis on their break and not acting like Mennonites at all:

Travis and his fake wife were smoking a joint behind the sod hut and laughing as though they were enjoying themselves.

At the beginning of Chapter 23, Nomi simply narrates,

They threw my mother out. Gave her the old heave-ho. The term is excommunicated. She was excommunicated said my dad.

Excommunication is a punishment handed to those who go against the regulations and rules of the sect as they were set forth by the leadership of the church. Those who are excommunicated are shunned by family and friends and the other members of the church; they are only allowed back if they return to the same church that handed out the excommunication.
What exactly the mother has done is not known to everyone; however, Nomi knows that she was caught with a radio on in the children's room of the church, and she supposedly was going on a daily basis to dress the leg of a very elderly Mrs. Klippenstein at her house. One day Nomi sees the woman at the Rest Haven home for the elderly where she lives, so her mother was obviously going somewhere else and doing something that may have violated the rules of the sect, but she does not know what. She later learns the truth and she finds letters from Mr. Quiring in her mother's drawer.
Apparently Nomi's mother, Trudie, was having an affair with Mr. Quiring, Nomi's teacher. When she tried to end this affair, Quiring fabricated tales of her having had sexual relations with other members of the community. He then aligned himself with Hans Rosenfeldt, the powerful minister (referred to as "Big Mouth") of the community and brother of Trudie. In order to preserve the lifestyle of the Mennonite community, the two men felt that Trudie must be shunned. Knowing that they have conspired against her, Trudie left the community, and the hypocrisy of Quiring was not revealed.
The Mennonite religious community proves to be nearly as flawed as other communities because it is ridden with hypocrisy; those who wield power arrange that they remain in this position even if it means sacrificing the truth.