Recommended reading - Mormon feminism
Allred, Janice. God the Mother and other theological essays. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1996.Janice Allred interprets Mormon theology from her perspective as a housewife and mother of nine. "Jesus taught us to pray to the Father," Allred writes, "not to set up barriers between us and God, but to remove them. [God is also] our Mother, a Mother who knows our needs before we can express them, a Mother who is here before we called out to her." (http://www.signaturebooks.com/god.htm)
Barber, Phyllis. How I got cultured: A Nevada memoir. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1994.
Growing up in Las Vegas does present challenges to today's pre-pubescents but imagine growing up Mormon in Las Vegas in the 1950s! In Barber's quirky, dramatic autobiography she describes the conflicts she experienced as a child, torn between the regimented world of her parents' Mormonism and her desire to "get cultured." The result is a compelling look at adolescence and a fascinating slice of Nevada life in the 50s and 60s. (http://www.nvbooks.nevada.edu/h/how.html)
Bartholomew, Rebecca. Audacious women: Early British Mormon immigrants. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1995.
Bartholomew fleshes out real-life profiles of these pioneering women through available letters, diaries, and public documents. They were by-and-large devout, and most of them approached their uncertain future with their eyes wide open. At minimum, they were least vaguely aware of what their religious commitment would entail. The author writes: "These women made mistakes. But if they were not angels, neither were they fools. They are likable. Their lives had meaning. They demonstrated that virtue has unlikely habitats and could even sprout in that spiritual chamber of horrors, that Eden betrayed, that whited sepulchre, Mormondom." (http://www.signaturebooks.com/audaciou.htm)
Beecher, Maureen Ursenbach and Lavina Fielding Anderson, eds. Sisters in spirit: Mormon women in historical and cultural perspective. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
This book of essays about Mormon women, all written and edited by scholars who are themselves Mormon women, is a brave and important work. Readers will fully appreciate just how brave and important it really is, however, if they can see how this work of historical theology fits into the history of historical writing about Mormon women, as well as how it fits into Mormon history itself. (http://www.press.uillinois.edu/pre95/0-252-06296-5.html)
Bell, Elouise. Only when I laugh. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1990.
In the tradition of Garrison Keillor, Elouise Bell tackles timely questions in a way that both celebrates and critiques her culture. Delighting readers of network magazine and the Salt Lake Tribune for years, she has compiled for the benefit of readers everywhere twenty-five of her most memorable articles—including "Zzzzzuchini"; "Christmyths"; "What Makes Botticelli Blush?" and her most popular essay, "The Meeting," in which gender roles are reversed in an LDS worship service. As charming and light-hearted as these are, there is an implied caveat: anyone who cannot visualize bishops in high heels, house husbands, or a Mormon Democratic caucus should seek their razor-sharp social commentary elsewhere. (http://www.signaturebooks.com/only.htm)
Bradley, Martha Sonntag. Pedestals and podiums: Utah women, religious authority and equal rights. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2005.
A history professor at the University of Utah and author of the award-winning book Four Zinas, Bradley offers a thorough, sensitive account of Mormon-dominated Utah’s bitterly explosive International Women’s Year (IWY) conference in 1977 and the ensuing battle over the Equal Rights Amendment. Her research draws from rich and plentiful archives and extensive oral history interviews with LDS women who lived through these turbulent events. Bradley herself attended the IWY conference in Utah, which was a catalyzing event for her own consciousness as a woman, so she writes with the rigor of a scholar but the insight of a firsthand participant in the event she chronicles. A skilled historian and excellent writer (she even makes lists of participants at conferences sound interesting), Bradley’s personal bias in favor of the ERA is present but muted. She remains largely evenhanded in portraying both sides of a charged altercation between LDS authority figures and women struggling to balance their faith and devotion to their religion with their political convictions as feminists. Her book is a vital chapter in Mormon history, American political history, and women’s history. It will also strike a powerful chord with anyone who has felt torn between religious authority and personal conviction. (Publishers Weekley review at http://signaturebooks.com/utahwomen.htm ; here's my take)
Bradley, Martha Sonntag and Mary Brown Firmage Woodward. Four Zinas: A story of mothers and daughters on the Mormon frontier. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2000.
Mother, daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter—it was an impressive line of prominent women, all named Zina. One converted to Mormonism in New York in 1835. The next married Joseph Smith and Brigham Young successively and served as the church's general Relief Society president. The third assisted her husband, Charles Ora Card, in founding Cardston, Alberta. The fourth married future church apostle Hugh B. Brown. Collectively this extended family had a significant impact on a large region of the American West. Individually each helped shape her particular era. Zina Young and Zina Card worked tirelessly for woman's suffrage. In addition, they encouraged women to study nursing and to become involved in industry, while also promoting drama and literature. And they inspired women through speeches and through their expressions of spirituality, including speaking in tongues. It was due in part to their efforts that many Mormon women came to feel good about themselves; in the process, the territory became not only habitable but bearable. (http://www.signaturebooks.com/zina.htm)
Brooks, Juanita. Quicksand and cactus: A memoir of the southern Mormon frontier. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1992. (Originally published in 1982 by Howe, SLC, UT)
Juanita Brooks became one of the best-known historians of Mormon and Utah history. Her autobiography is a valuable source of information on early southern Utah and Mormon history. (http://www.usu.edu/usupress/individl/quick_ca.htm)
Bush, Laura L. Faithful transgressions in the American West: Six twentieth-century Mormon women's autobiographical acts. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2004.
The subjects of Laura L. Bush’s book are six Mormon women writers and their published autobiographies. The central issue Bush finds in these works is how their authors have dealt with the authority of Mormon Church leaders. As she puts it in her preface, “I use the phrase ‘faithful transgression’ to describe moments in the texts when each writer, explicitly or implicitly, commits herself in writing to trust her own ideas and authority over official religious authority while also conceiving of and depicting herself to be a ‘faithful’ member of the Church.” (http://www.usu.edu/usupress/individl/Faithful%20Transgressions.htm)
Bushman, Claudia L. Mormon sisters: Women in early Utah. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1997. (Originally published in 1976 by Emmeline Press, Cambridge, Mass.)
In the last twenty years, an increasing number of books on the history of Utah and Mormon women have appeared. The book that led the way for these varied studies came to be when a group of Boston-area women, connected with the periodical Exponent II (named in honor of its nineteenth century predecessor, The Woman's Exponent), got together to publish a collection of topical essays on Utah women's history titled Mormon Sisters. (http://www.usu.edu/usupress/individl/morm_sis.htm)
Busk, Judy. The sum of our past: Revisiting pioneer women. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2004.
There are two stereotypes of pioneer women: the silently suffering, "submissive but sturdy" woman in "sunbonnet, baby at breast, rifle at the ready, dedicated to restoring civilization as rapidly as possible" and women like the Calamity Jane who "drank, smoked, and cursed and was handy with a poker deck, a six-gun, and a horse." These images are reinforced in art, literature, films, and inspirational literature. It begs the question of who these women really were. In 1993, Judy Busk decided to find out. (http://www.signaturebooks.com/sum.htm)
Campbell, Beverly. Eve and the choice made in Eden. Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft, 2003.
Is the way that women evaluate their own worth affected still by the biblical story of Mother Eve? Author Beverly Campbell suggests, "In much of the literature and in most of the histories referring to women there is an undercurrent of apology, as though there is something not quite 'all right' about being a woman. In looking for the source of this unease, I came to recognize that it could be traced to accounts of the Creation and to the ever-prevalent and negative characterizations of Eve." She writes of three levels from which the story of Eden must be viewed: as historical fact, as a series of symbols and metaphors, and as a place for a beginning our own search for spiritual understanding and relevance in life. (http://deseretbook.com/store/product?product_id=100051191)
Compton, Todd. In sacred loneliness: The plural wives of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1996.
Beginning in the 1830s, at least thirty-three women married Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. For all of Smith's wives, the experience of being secretly married was socially isolating, emotionally draining, and sexually frustrating. Despite the spiritual and temporal benefits, which they acknowledged, they found their faith tested to the limit of its endurance. After Smith's death in 1844, their lives became even more "lonely and desolate." (http://www.signaturebooks.com/insacred.htm)
Derr, Jill Mulvay, Janath Russell Cannon and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher. Women of covenant: The story of Relief Society. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1992.
The history of Relief Society from 1842 and the story of women in the Church. (http://deseretbook.com/store/product?product_id=100000381)
Hanks, Maxine, ed. Women and authority: Re-emerging Mormon feminism. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1992.
Editor Maxine Hanks offers the reader 19 essays that focus on the historical, spiritual, and intellectual relationship of Mormon women with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The articles are organized according to three categories: Mormon feminism, Mormon women and authority, and women and the priesthood of the church. The book contains excerpts from the most significant Mormon feminist documents. It contains full essays from sixteen of the most respected scholars of the topic, as well. (http://www.signaturebooks.com/women.htm)full text at: http://www.signaturebookslibrary.org/women/introduction.htm
Hart, Heidi. Grace notes: The waking of a woman's voice. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2004.
Heidi Hart’s luminous memoir retraces her search for an opening to her heart’s path. She finds that the religious life of her Latter-day Saint family—which includes a revered General Authority—robs her of her voice and her spirit. When she discovers Catharine, a mute, Quaker ancestor, Hart begins a vital journey—a journey blessed by her devout and devoted husband; a journey that leads her as she studies Zuni mythology, Jewish tradition, Benedictine monastic ritual, Emily Dickinson, and Saint Hildegard of Bingen—a journey that leads her to a place that feels like home: the company of Friends, the Quaker community of Salt Lake City. With grace and lyricism, Hart shares the private, personal wisdom she has earned in her community of friends, a community that embraces silences and dissonance, a place where she can't keep from singing. (http://www.uofupress.com/store/product318.html)
Hunter, Rodello. A daughter of Zion. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1999. (Originally published in 1972 by Knopf, New York)
A free-spirited Mormon, Rodello Hunter has unconventional ways. Take her manner of serving in the Lincoln Ward of the Granite Stake of Zion. How best to manage unruly teenagers in her Mutual Improvement class? Talk straight, inject humor, admit you're human—advice that she freely passes on to the ward's male leadership, as well. On the other hand, she harbors a few secret misgivings, some deep questions that contradict her cheery exterior and the aplomb with which she approaches her church obligations. These little heresies, her occasional un-daughter-of-Zion-like tendencies, are shared honestly, much like the nun in "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All to You," only this time it's a Mormon story. (http://www.signaturebooks.com/daughter.htm)
(out of print)
Johnson, Sonia. From housewife to heretic. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981.
Sonia became such an ardent supporter of the ERA that she was excommunicated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1979. Sonia exposed the role of the wealthy Mormon church in sabotaging passage of the ERA. She went on a 37-day hunger strike in the Illinois statehouse in 1982 during the last days of the ERA countdown, to symbolize how "women hunger for justice." She ran on a feminist ticket for President of the United States in 1984 as the candidate of the Citizens Party, becoming the first third-party candidate to qualify for primary matching funds. In countless speeches she pointed out: "Nobody's ever fought a revolution for women." She wrote eloquently of her experiences in From Housewife to Heretic (1981). (http://www.ffrf.org/day/?day=27&month=2)
Newell, Linda King and Valerie Tippetts Avery. Mormon enigma: Emma Hale Smith. 2nd ed. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
Mormon Enigma is the bestselling biography of Emma Hale Smith, wife of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. It was Joseph Smith who announced that an angel of the Lord had commanded him to introduce a 'new order of marriage.' And it was Emma Hale Smith who confronted the practice of polygamy head on. As the authors note in their introduction, "Early leaders in Utah castigated Emma from their pulpits for opposing Brigham Young and the practice of polygamy, and for lending support to the Reorganization. As these attitudes filtered down through the years, Emma was virtually written out of official Utah histories. In this biography, we have attempted to reconstruct the full story of this remarkable and much misunderstood woman's experiences." (http://www.press.uillinois.edu/pre95/0-252-06291-4.html)
(out of print)
Pearson, Carol Lynn. Daughters of light. Provo: Trilogy Arts, 1973.
In 1973, Carol Lynn Pearson published a compilation on women and the gifts of the Spirit. Daughters of Light, widely distributed by Bookcraft, offers a chapter for each of a number of gifts and while at ninty six pages its heft may be insignificant, the content is not. Most Mormons would probably be shocked by Pearson’s formula of briefly outlining historic teachings of priesthood authorities and then sharing the stories of our sister exemplars. They would be shocked because these are stories that we no longer tell and they are sadly foreign to many. While some topics are accessible, like revelation, others, like healing by the laying on of hands, border on the illicit. But this is Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and Joseph F. Smith exhorting women to lay hands on the sick. And this is the spirit I feel as I read the stories of Emma, Zina and Bethsheba. And I check the back of the book to make sure…yes, it is Bookcraft. Critically, Daughters of Light frequently relies on retrospective accounts, much as Madsen’s Joseph Smith lectures, and consequently lacks some of the gravitas of the New Mormon History. Moreover, the introductory doctrinal expositions are quite cursory. Despite these criticisms and even outside its time and place, Pearson’s book remains a powerful declaration in the story of Mormon women. (By Common Consent)
(out of print)
Pearson, Carol Lynn. Goodbye, I love you. New York: Random House, 1986.
Poet and playwright Pearson here movingly recounts the difficulties and tragedies undergone by herself and her husband, a devout Utah Mormon couple. Although aware of Gerald's homosexual past, Carol had faith that marriage would overcome her husband's sexual preference. The shock of discovering, after eight years of apparent happiness and the birth of four children, that his inclination was still for males shook her belief in her own femaleness and the role of women. Moving to the more permissive atmosphere of San Francisco, they obtained a friendly divorce but remained very close as a family. When Gerald was stricken by AIDS, their love withstood this ultimate trial, providing support throughout his illness and the strength to face death with serenity. (Publishers Weekly)
Sorensen, Virginia. A little lower than the angels. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1997. (Originally published in 1942 by Knopf, New York)
When A Little Lower than the Angels appeared in 1942, its author and recent Brigham Young University graduate Virginia Sorensen was overwhelmed by the positive national attention. Clifton Fadiman, writing for The New Yorker, noted how "convincingly [she] explores . . . the tragic, comic, and grotesque problems of plural marriage." Set in Nauvoo, Illinois, she tells the story of a single family, a woman and her Mormon husband, loosely based on her in-laws' family history from the period and augmented by on-site research. The novel preceeded the first scholarly treatment of Nauvoo by three years. As an outsiders, Sorensen's protaganist is puzzled by the city's mysteries. Gradually, however, she discovers that a neighbor's obsession with the LDS prophet is due to her polygamous marriage to him. Even so, Mercy Baker cannot foresee the complications that her own baptism will bring. (http://www.signaturebooks.com/angels.htm)
Tanner, Annie Clark. A Mormon mother: An autobiography. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1993. (Originally published in 1941 by Deseret News Press, Salt Lake City, UT)
Annie Clark was a Brigham Young Academy student when she became the plural wife of Joseph Tanner, a faculty member and future Mormon church administrator. Although "Mr. Tanner's" attentions were directed more toward his other wives, Annie nonetheless bore him eight children. Her attempts to understand this loveless product of her church's bidding are impressive and poignant. (http://www.signaturebooks.com/mother.htm)
Toscano, Margaret and Paul Toscano. Strangers in paradox: Explorations in Mormon theology. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1990.
Exploring a wide range of theological issues, Strangers in Paradox examines the paradoxical nature of Mormonism. The authors consider the nature of God, gender roles, religious authority, and symbolism, arguing that the more one evaluates one's beliefs, myths, and rituals, the more vital and meaningful they become. Reminiscent of Hans Küng, or C. S. Lewis, they are perhaps provocative but always faith-affirming. (http://www.signaturebooks.com/stranger.htm)
(out of print)
Tullidge, Edward W. Women of Mormondom. New York: Tullidge & Crandall, 1877.
full text at http://www.helpingmormons.org/women_of_mormondom.htm
Van Wagoner, Richard S. Mormon polygamy: A history. 2nd ed. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1992.
In this comprehensive survey of Mormon Polygamy, Richard Van Wagoner details, with precision and detachment, the tumultuous reaction among insiders and outsiders to plural marriage. In an honest, methodical way, he traces the origins, the peculiarities common to the midwestern and later Utah periods, and post-1890 new marriages. Drawing heavily on first-hand accounts, he outlines the theological underpinnings and the personal trauma associated with this lifestyle. What emerges is a portrait that neither discounts nor exaggerates the historical evidence. He presents polygamy in context, neither condemning nor defending, while relevant contemporary accounts are treated sympathetically but interpreted critically. (http://www.signaturebooks.com/mp.htm)
(out of print)
Warenski, Marilyn. Patriarchs and politics: The plight of the Mormon woman. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978.
Patriarchs and Politics speaks with the voice of someone outside of Mormonism explaining Mormonism and Mormon women to other outsiders. It was not until Warenski discussed Brigham Young and the women of the early Utah church that I checked the back flap of the book cover. Yep, she has Utah roots after all, no matter how "outside" her voice now may be. Who else would care enough to write the book? She can't seem to prevent a definite sarcastic edge in her discussion of Brigham Young. Throughout the rest of the book, the tone is often ironic, usually thoughtful, sometimes sharply perceptive, and sometimes sympathetic. The primary purpose of Patriarchs and Politics, however, is to attack the patriarchal order in priesthood and politics and the interface between. (http://www.sunstoneonline.com/magazine/searchable/Issue13.asp)
Williams, Terry Tempest. Refuge: An unnatural history of family and place. New York: Vintage, 1992.
In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic. (http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0679740244)
Version without pictures and descriptions here.
posted by Heather P. at 3:17 PM
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