The mid-November darkness settles early in the afternoon. As my window dims, a tall man with a chocolate complexion peeks through the door. “Charity,” his rich baritone voice fills my small room, “I’m one of…
In the fall of 1973, I enrolled as a sophomore at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. On a whim, I registered for a course titled ENG 240 WRITING POETRY, INSTRUCTOR: E. BELL. I had no idea who “E. Bell” was—male or female? animal, vegetable, or mineral?—but I soon found out. The first day of class, as we eager, would-be-poets settled into our neatly aligned desk-chairs, the door opened and a statuesque woman with the regal swagger of a Hawaiian queen and the deadpan grin of a stand-up comic entered the classroom toting a hefty book bag that she promptly dropped on the teacher’s desk—clunk!
It’s difficult to know where to start in discussing a novel as thoughtful as American Fork. Politics, religion, belonging, family history, ecology, sense of place, the high costs of love and our dogged willingness to pay…
It has now been months since I first made the acquaintance of Gilda Trillim, but even now I must admit that I do not completely understand her.
Aptly titled, Seasons of Change: Stories of Transition is a well-curated collection of prose and poetry featuring a specific demographic of Mormon women who read and contribute to the literary journal and blog Segullah. Eleven thoughtfully arranged categories containing fifty-eight voices capture a diversity of experiences that occasionally touch on issues of class, sexual orientation, ability, race, and ethnicity, but primarily plumb the life and death observations and gendered experiences of a middle-class swath of well-educated, able-bodied, heteronormative, married women from different age groups and North American geographies (their rare references to race or ethnicity also suggest racial homogeneity among them).
One of my favorite types of sacred music is the music of the Russian Orthodox church. It has its origins in Byzantine chant, but developed its own distinct style called Znamenny Chant. It is sung in Old Slavonic, so I cannot understand it with the exception of a word here or there that is similar in modern Russian, but I find it incredibly beautiful. Sung in resonant sacred spaces as part of worship services, you hear the devotion in the music. Not only are the sounds and attitudes of the singers imbued with beauty, the music is part of a rich symbolism, together with candles and incense, that help the worshipper to look upward to the divine. Other religious traditions have similarly beautiful elements involving music. For example, a muezzin calls out the adhan, or call to prayer, from the mosque five times during the day; a hazzan, or cantor, is a trained musician who sings prayers in the synagogue.
“I was raped by two men.”
It was only after many months of denial that I was able to utter those words. Even after facing the fact, the circumstances surrounding my assault were so muddy and bizarre that to this day it troubles me to consider them. Ultimately I decided to share my story because I am the mother of two amazing sons. Because one situation can enlighten the next, my particular parenting perspective is informed by my own experience. I am trying to break the cycle of secret-keeping and shame. My story is one of millions. It is a reflection. It is a template.
Okay, I’m going to let the cat out of the bag, so if you don’t want the single, major twist of this novel spoiled, please walk away now. … For those of you still here,…
Steven L. Peck has long been seen as a pioneer in the field of Mormon letters, because of his ability to move beyond the usual clichés and expectations that often come with fiction about the faith. In two of his previous novels, The Scholar of Moab and A Short Stay in Hell, he successfully moved the genre into the twenty-first century because of his willingness to push boundaries, embrace the unorthodox, and explore difficult themes. His latest contribution, Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats, follows this same vein by branching out into even newer territory, but unfortunately, it often gets lost along the way.