Queer Mormon Pioneers Camp Out In Brooklyn
November 5, 2013Rachel Farmer guest posts at Feminist Mormon Housewives to discuss her new art exhibit in New York, and describes her encounters with the archives of Dialogue.
It’s funny to exhibit my little ceramic pioneers here on the east coast. People wonder who they are and what they are doing. Are they prairie moms? Eastern European peasants? Pilgrims? What are those carts they are lugging around? Are they peddlers? One thing is certain – these women know how to work!
This fascination with my ancestry — and questions about my own place in the Mormon narrative — led my young nerdy self on a quest to read all the back-issues of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (that my parents kept conveniently stacked in their study).
The women I met on these pages forever changed my worldview: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Lavina Fielding Anderson. Though they wrote about contemporary feminist issues, it was their insights into Mormon women’s more independent and expansive role in the early church that gave me some extra backbone.