[…] was serious and poetic. It won the Alberta Lieutenant Governor’s Emerging Artist Award, was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was a finalist for a Whitney Award. The Montreal Review of […]
Cross posted on The Exponent Blog
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought turns 50 this year. To honor this legendary Mormon publication, I’ve collected from various Exponent bloggers some thoughts about Dialogue‘s role in their lives and about Dialoguearticles that have particularly impacted them. MayDialogue continue on for another 50 years… and many, many more after that.
April Young Bennett:
While researching background information for a Relief Society lesson, I read Jessie L. Embry’s 1982 Dialogue article, “Grain Storage: The Balance of Power Between Priesthood Authority and Relief Society Autonomy“. It was such an eye-opener for me! The article presents compelling evidence that Emmeline Wells and her counselors did not choose to sell several decades of grain storage to the United States government, but rather had their grain storage program sold out from under them by priesthood leaders without their knowledge, something I had not read before in either church published or independent histories. Daughters in my Kingdom, for example, says “the Relief Society sold 200,000 bushels to the United States government.”
[…] actions that make the plot spin. The prologue: “Christopher Jacob Arnold sought peace for many days.” The search for peace is a principal theme here. The Arnolds are a family in crisis, and in […]
The Latter Days: A Memoir. By Judith Freeman. Pantheon, 2016. 336 pages.
Reviewed by Darin Stewart
Judith Freeman’s The Latter Days is a remarkable memoir of an unremarkable life. The American novelist ticks all of the standard boxes when recounting her childhood – abusive father, distant mother, disowned sibling, youthful indiscretion – none falling outside a common coming of age narrative. She accomplishes nothing particularly noteworthy and does nothing particularly dreadful. What makes the memoir fascinating is the context in which these non-events occur. Freeman grew up in a small, uniformly Mormon town in 1950s Utah. That backdrop elevates her beautifully written narrative from mildly diverting memoir to insightful social and religious commentary.
[…] about “how to forgive” that draws parallel wisdom from the film Ben-Hur, Ed Beverly is a Mormon English professor at a Presbyterian school. Wrongfully fired and haunted by decades of animosity toward Chairman Grubgeld, […]
[…] was not, decidedly, the cloistered Mormon culture of my youth. In fact, since my time as an English major at BYU, I’ve deliberately worked to be a writer who happens to be Mormon, and […]
For Time and All Eternities. By Mette Ivie Harrison. Soho Press, 2017
Reviewed by Heather B. Moore
For Time and All Eternities is the third installment of the Linda Wallheim mystery series. For Time works well as a standalone—in fact, I read the first book The Bishop’s Wife, but not the second book. I didn’t feel lost, which I appreciated. Linda Wallheim is the wife of an LDS Bishop, and although she and her husband have raised five children together, recent months in their marriage has been rocky. Linda is sympathetic to those who have struggled with a church policy change, and she finds that her sympathies have created a deep divide between her and her husband Kurt. Regardless, they continue to move through the motions of their marriage until the day that Linda’s son Kenneth comes to tell her he is marrying a young woman from a polygamist family. Linda and Kurt are shocked, but they agree to meet the young woman Naomi, who in turn, invites Linda and Kurt to meet her very large family–which includes Naomi’s father Stephen Carter, his five wives, and dozens of children.
Invisible Men / Invincible WomenEric Freeze. Invisible Men: Stories. San Francisco: Outpost 19, 2016. 150 pp. Paperback: $16.00.
Reviewed by Lisa Rumsey Harris
Dialogue. Winter 2016
The gaze of the girl on the cover of Eric Freeze’s short story collection arrested me—stopped me. Her eyes, full of hostility, told me that if I opened the book, I would be intruding. Her bright knee-length plaid skirt, reminiscent of schoolgirl uniforms, belied the knowledge behind her glare. If it wasn’t for her posture, her arms embracing something, I wouldn’t have noticed the titular Invisible Man next to her on the cover.
Her warning wasn’t wrong. I felt like an intruder as I began to read. I could only take it in small doses—read, then turn the ideas over and over in my mind, like rubbing a smooth stone between my fingers.
[…] compliance. Yet I can’t help feeling that Zentner could have done more here with Dill and his search for answers. I wonder if Dill could have struck out more purposefully and sought God in […]
Thomas F. Rogers. Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand: Reflections on Faith, Reason, Charity, and Beauty. Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2016. 349 pp.
Reviewed by Mahonri Stewart
As a book of short, religious, and academic non-fiction, Thomas F. Rogers’s Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand is extremely valuable to the Mormon intellectual community; but as a reflection of a devoted disciple and a soulful artist, it goes beyond even that to be authentically moving. In a modern world where spirituality and religious belief is a place of tension and contention, Rogers has written from his place of the faithful agitator—pushing our culture’s boundaries where needed and then turning around to help the Mormon community reach inward and pull the wagons around shared principles.