[…] 2015): 69-120. Turns out there are still new things to be said about Joseph Smith. The MHA community is especially exciting to see the fruits from Signature Books’ long-anticipated Joseph Smith trilogy. You can […]
[…] find the idiosyncrasies of that culture fascinating if not outright exotic. Those with experience in the LDS community will likely recognize with some discomfort the “careful sameness of the Mormon culture” that permeated the […]
Past Second BaseJoey Franklin. My Wife Wants You to Know I’m Happily Married. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. 194 pp. Paper: $19.95. ISBN: 978-0-8032-7844-8.
Reviewed by Eric Freeze
At the last Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference, a famed historical literary figure stood for pictures and selfies next to booths piled high with books. He was bald except for a tuft of hair in the middle of his head and a dark goatee and handlebar mustache. In a more mainstream context, people would probably think he was Shakespeare with his brocade doublet and puffy sleeves. But most images of Shakespeare emphasize his shoulder-length bob. And Shakespeare wore a stiff collar, not a pleated ruff. Maybe the actor just didn’t have the hair? And why the goatee? But anyone who has studied the history of the essay knew immediately when they saw him: it was Michel de Montaigne.
Mormon Tradition and the Individual TalentMary Lythgoe Bradford. Mr. Mustard Plaster and Other Mormon Essays. Draper, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2015. 185 pp.
Reviewed by Joey Franklin
In his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T. S. Eliot writes that tradition “cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour.”1 This has always underscored for me the importance of knowing your literary tradition, of reading widely and deeply, and of exposing yourself to a variety of great voices. In many ways the work I did in graduate school was a clunky attempt to cultivate what Eliot calls “the historical sense,” an awareness of tradition that “compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones” but with “the whole of the literature of Europe” and “the whole of the literature of his own country” in his mind as well.2 Tradition, to Eliot, was the deep well of Western literature. Studying the personal essay in school, tradition for me meant the work of the genre’s luminaries—Montaigne and Bacon, Hazlitt and Lamb, Woolf and Didion, Baldwin and White.
Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives: Ceaselessly into the PastKaren Rosenbaum. Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives. Provo: Zarahemla Books, 2015. 204 pp.
Reviewed by Josh Allen
When reading Karen Rosenbaum’s short story collection Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Wives, I kept thinking about the end of The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald’s haunting conclusion: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” So it is with the women who populate Rosenbaum’s fourteen stories in this collection. The past defines them, breathes always within them. They live preoccupied with family legacies and personal histories, often ruminating, always remembering.
Board member Patrick Mason discusses the role of Dialogue within Mormons Studies in this new podcast at LDS Perspectives. He explains “There are also really important institutions like the Mormon History Association, which is 50 years old, and Dialogue: A Dialogue of Mormon Thought also 50 years old. These institutions and periodicals where this scholarship is done. A lot of this is just people supporting with blood, sweat, and tears. These are the institutions that have built us to where we are now. And I think where we go from here is further insitutionalization.”
Find the LDS Perspectives podcast here.
[…] be found at the Family Acceptance Project. It is time to adopt and promote their recommendations. The LDS community is failing to extend its love to its LGBT children and neighbors, and for many of […]
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.
Levi S. Peterson’s “Kid Kirby” from the Dialogue Summer 2016 issue won a 2016 Association for Mormon Letters award for best short fiction. In honor of this award, Dialogue has released the article early so that everyone can read it. Find “Kid Kirby” here.
From the AML website: “When asked what the purpose of literature is, the short story writer Issac Bashevis Singer responded succinctly that literature is to entertain and instruct. There’s no end to good short stories that meet one of these criterion, but a story that both entertains and instructs, a rarer specimen in the literary world, might be called a great story. Levi Peterson’s poignant and captivating ‘Kid Kirby’ is unequivocally a great story.”
The 2017 Mormon Studies Conference is themed “Multicultural Mormonism: Religious Cohesion in a New Era of Diversity” and was held March 30 and 31st at Utah Valley University. Find videos of the presentations here.
This conference explored multicultural and intercultural interactions within Mormonism, focusing on issues surrounding ethnicity, race, and class; and with an eye toward the future of Mormonism as a global religion.
It included presentations by Gina Colvin, Ignacio Garcia, Janan Graham-Russell, Moroni Benally, Anapesi Ka’ili, Darron Smith, and more.
Find the entire schedule and video links here.