Joanna describes growing up in a very loving, orthodox Mormon home in California during the cold war era with affection and humor and clarity. Her gorgeous prose and uniquely Mormon use of metaphor made me feel and see and understand in a way that I think would have been accessible to non-Mormons and Mormons alike. But because I'm Mormon, and because I'm now unorthodox, she made me remember what it felt like to belong to this community "everything understood between us."
The first chapter:
"This is how I came into this world, this world of believing: an ancient spirit striving to remember the shape of eternity at the kitchen table, in a house where ancestors knew our names and stepped through the walls, my dreams filled with light, my head consecrated with oil, every Sunday morning white bread and tap water for sacrament, every Sunday evening the taste of a ripe glazed strawberry saying "grateful" on my tongue."But she continues:
"I grew up in a world where all the stories I heard arrived at the same conclusions: the wayfarer restored, the sick healed, the lost keys found, a singular truth confirmed. And an orthodox story is the only kind of story I ever wanted to be able to tell. But these are not the kinds of stories life has given me. . .In the world I grew up in, it was not okay to tell unorthodox stories. We did not hear them in church. We did not read them in scripture. But sooner or later they break through to the surface in every Mormon life, in every human life, in every life of faith. I am not afraid of them. Because this is the story life has given me to tell."I was so charmed by this book, I swear I read half of it out loud to anyone who happened to be around me this weekend. I would laugh and say "I've felt that way too!" when she talked about how Mormons love to see other Mormons, to see family vans, to speak the language of our people.
Like Joanna, I remembered thrilling when I was in the company of huge groups of Mormons and the safety I felt against "the world" when I was home and all was happy. The times at girls camp when I was finally free to ask real, female questions. The food. The hymns. The idea of a God who hears and answers prayers. So Mormon, the book made me realize how I took it much for granted.
And other times I'd react with shared pain at her stories that were close to my own. Early sexuality, fear over eternal polygamy, Prop 8, and discovering I'm an enemy of the church (an intellectual feminist), crying "out of fear an danger and loneliness. . .that the Church had punished women like me. . .leaving us exiled among our own."
"Dead to our own dead."
But this book is not about the flaws of the church any more than it is about its wonderful people of sparkling difference. It's about how one woman's reaction "when we discover at the core of faith a knot of contradictions." I share Joanna's belief that there is no way forward but to tell the whole story: the one that presents Mormons as "A people of sparkling differences and human failings. . .A people who are not afraid to tell an unorthodox story full of angels, sacred groves, ancestor pioneers, sacrifice, and longing, because an unorthodox story is what history has given us to tell."
Mormon or not, orthodox or unorthodox, male, female, whoever you are--if you love honesty, complexity, and gorgeous prose, you'll love this book. You'll love Mormons as they really are. You'll want to sing kumbaya, and hug your neighbor, and be kinder to everyone you meet. And if you're like me and have felt totally alone in this religion, you'll want to send Joanna a thank you letter.
So I'm guessing it got a lot of stars? I really do want to read this book. I think she is awesome and I would like to know more of her story.
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