Spring 2020
In this issue, guest-edited by Exponent II, we asked women to write about claiming power. We hoped that writers would think creatively about the idea of power, including traditional forms of authority in an organizational hierarchy but also going beyond this sometimes-limiting definition. We wanted women to examine their engagement of power within their families, wards, workplaces, and selves. We were interested in the way Mormon women are using their power to empower other marginalized groups. Includes pieces by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Claudia Bushman, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto and many more. Plus art, poetry, and reviews.
Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 5–32
I cannot help but smile when she calls me hermana, her “sister.” Her reference to me signifies a dual meaning: I am not only like a family member to her, but additionally, the term hermana is used among Spanish-speaking members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons) to signify solidarity and integration with one another.
Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 33–47
In this essay, I discuss this history, present evidence that Latter-day Saint men sold abortion pills in the late nineteenth century, and argue that it is likely some Latter-day Saint women took them in an attempt to restore menstrual cycles that anemia, pregnancy, or illness had temporarily “stopped.” Women living in the twenty-first century are unable to access these earlier understandings of pregnancy because the way we understand pregnancy has changed as a result of debates over the criminalization of abortion and the development of ultrasound technology.
After presenting my research on 1970s Mormon motherhood at a national rhetoric conference in 2017, a woman in the audience (also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) called my research “old news” and made some harsh and disparaging remarks about my analysis. I was upset by her comments, but one of my co-panelists defended me, and after the presentation, five people came up to talk with me about my research in positive terms. One master’s student wanted to know how she could do similar research.
As the editor of Exponent II, I have had innumerable Mormon men—progressive and orthodox—tell me that they would like to listen to women, but women just don’t step up and talk. From President Russell M.…
Eldria is a technician on a team that has unlocked the secret to prayer. The learning machine has labored for years. It has uttered prayers both ancient and fresh, rote and random, then monitored weather…
I was scheduled to be naked at ten in the morning on Saturday. This was a conflict with my uber-religious community and my lifetime of body shame. I drove to the studio anyway. The artist…
Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 129–142
Interview with Brittany Mangelson who is a full-time minister for Community of Christ. She has a master of arts in religion from Graceland University and works as a social media seeker ministry specialist.
Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 143–157
Women’s work has always been multifaceted and applied across all aspects of human experience. Women have filled many roles: queen, mother, inventor, artist, healer, politician, caretaker, prophet. Women’s voices have been loud and quiet, sometimes invisible but always present, on the vanguard or on the margins, leading, pushing, making change.
I never wanted a son.
I feel the heavy ugliness of those words like rough stones in my hands, taste them like shame on my tongue. Children have always been alien creatures to me, even when I was a child myself, and boy children, especially, have proven foreign and unrelatable.
I am outside running, playing, and dancing to musical beats from our neighbor’s house. It is a bright sunny day, and, just as on other beautiful days, I am on top of the world, where…
Stories are a binding force in families, a fact Mormons have known for a long time. A study at Emory University tried to identify what could strengthen families and help kids be more resilient. Their conclusion: “The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative.”
Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 99–107
Elder Oaks clarified that priesthood is the authority and power of God. By extension, that must also be the authority and power of our Heavenly Mother. I decided to give it a name. Not the Order of Aaron, that great Old Testament wingman to Moses, or the Order of Melchizedek, mentor and life coach to Abraham, but the Order of Eve, a matriarchal priesthood, in honor of the mother of all living.
This essay builds on a talk I gave at Utah State University on July 12, 2017 at a conference honoring Leonard J. Arrington, the first credentialed academic to serve the Church of Jesus Christ of…
I am very happy to see the publication of a new issue of Dialogue edited by Exponent II women. I have had dealings with both publications for more than forty years and know the positive…
Brigham is boiling inside
at the audacity of the prophet
who said that God was once
a man.
She puts her hands on my head
By the power of the divine womanhood we both share,
And blesses me to love myself, to love others,
To feel power in moving forward,
To see clearly, and kindly.
One summer dusk I floated in the swimming pool as billowing
black thunderheads glowered on every horizon, spitting
lightning at the earth as night gathered beyond
them. I willed the monsoon
I’m no Mormon but ask Google, can you take the Mormon
out of a once-Mormon? I’m Mormon. Former
stay-at-home Mormon mom. A non-drinker
Last night she lay in bed and read the men’s words while blood flowed
and spread like a petal, pooled and ached, red as stymied truth.
Every woman from twelve to sixty could have told them life is
mutable, if they would have asked her—a flutter, a gush, a
screaming love
It wasn’t a surprise
when they wrapped their hands
around my body like
chestnut leaves,
linen bindings,
tatted antimacassar lovingly draped,
I was never so finely adorned.
When was the last time you read a romance novel?
My answer does not count. I recently read three for the sole purpose of finding one to review, but the previous time was certainly before college.
In August 2019, a study by The Bookseller showed that in the United Kingdom, “children’s books account for just 4.9% of review space, despite making up a third of the market.”[1] While no such study…
How history is framed and whose stories are told by an institution reveals much about its paradigms and priorities. From a survey of the past few years of history and Mormon studies materials published about…
One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly is the kind of work that becomes more radical with time. When I first read it years ago, I appreciated it. I liked its looseness and its light.…
My girlhood fascination with princesses and queens has curbed only slightly, if at all, in my young adult years. I first encountered them in the fairy tale, as most of us do, but they have…
Women. A subject that stirs my soul as I seek to navigate this dance of life. I have recently become even more aware of my own need for a community of women to help me…
