AML 2021 Presidential Address: In the Wilderness

In the Wilderness

The history of Mormon Literature is littered with longing for a Renaissance of our own. It hit me for the first time in 2006. I was twenty-three years old and running a Mormon theater collective when I got up on a makeshift stage to call for one: one with our faces turned toward Harlem. But every one of us thinks we are an Adam or Eve, just starting to name things in a new world. I didn’t grasp at the time how many layers of bygone dreams there were beneath me. Later I read Eugene England’s 1982 meditation on Mormon Renaissance, “The Dawning of a Brighter Day,” Spencer W. Kimball’s 1967 address “Education for Eternity” (later revised as “The Gospel Vision of the Arts”), and of course, Orson F. Whitney’s 1888 sermon “Home Literature,” where he says we will have “Miltons and Shakespeares of our own” if we build “our own hive and honeycomb.”

While I was working for the Joseph Smith Papers, I found what might be the first reference to the dream of a great Mormon literature. This is from Sidney Rigdon in 1836:

May I not again ask, how is Zion to become the joy and praise of the whole earth, so that kings shall come to the brightness of her rising? Surely, it will be by her becoming more wise, more learned, more refined, and more noble…And by what means is this to be obtained? The answer is, by the superiority of her literary institutions, and by a general effort of all the saints to patronize literature in our midst.¹

The dream, then, has belonged to every generation in the history of our faith. For almost two centuries, there has never been a time when someone hasn’t hoped to bring together readers’ efforts, patrons’ resources, and writers’ craft to make literary institutions of our own. There has never been a time when we haven’t wanted to read things that move and astonish and change us. When we haven’t wished to expand the borders of the Mormon imagination.

Why long for literature? Because we are a people of the books. It was words that sparked something in each of us, words that drew us together. From the beginning, Mormonism attracted people so thirsty for words of the Lord, they split the canon wide open to drink from the waters locked beneath. Of course we want more good books.

Why long for literature? Because literature is vicarious. The tools of literature are designed to strip away obscuring layers and give us a glimpse of another soul. Designed to reach out across time, space, and circumstance to link lives together. Of course we want our hearts turned.

Why literature? Because if there is one thing we truly know, it’s that there is power in words. Sages say the Torah was written in black fire on white fire—and we, too, have felt drawn toward a radiating warmth. We believe God lives in eternal burnings. Of course we wish for tongues of flame.

Why a literature of our own? Because we recognize the weight of the world. We have been warned against the sins of the generation; we can see, one would hope, at least that not all is well in Babylon. We know that the stories the world most wants about us are tales of fanatics and freaks. We’ve seen many of our best writers literally turn to magic to disguise themselves in outside eyes so they can share their Mormon minds. Yes, we know the grinding gravity of a dominant discourse—and yet we still claim the privilege of radical, heretical, insistent difference. We need a literature of our own because new wine should break old bottles. The genres and markets and conventions around us should never slake our thirst. We, the heirs of proud exiles, should never stop seeking a better home.

But we have failed, again and again, to nurture and nourish those who work in words. We have failed to create spaces for bold experimentation. The Mormon writer of today will not find the kind of literary institutions Sidney Rigdon called for in 1836. We have been scattered. We have hidden. We have fled.

The Saints Rigdon addressed in Kirtland never built up better literary institutions because their quixotic attempt at a financial institution failed, driving them west in its wake. Orson F. Whitney’s call for home literature on the model of other home industries came too late, just before pressure from the United States government convinced us to dissolve the People’s Party and downplay communal economics. I came of artistic age in the crater left after the brighter day Eugene England saw crashed to a close at BYU in the 1990s in controversies over propriety and authority. When I applied for graduate school in creative writing at what could have been our literary institution, a faculty member in my ward encouraged me to leave my Mormon writing out of the application altogether if I wanted to be taken seriously. What happens to a dream deferred?

For years now, I have watched the dumbest conversation unfold over and over again. It’s a conversation about why there isn’t a broadly recognized body of great Mormon literature. I’ve watched people pathologize our culture, seen them say with a straight face that we lack imagination and depth, or that our theology prevents maturity, because they think literary writing and literary recognition just automatically happen if you have something worthwhile to say. And I’m not just talking about that one reporter in the New York Times:² I’ve seen Mormons go all in on those self-shaming talking points. Maybe it happens so easily because most American Mormons are accepted as white, which can make it harder to see certain aspects of how the world works. Because so many Latter-day Saints have been embraced in so many spheres in this society, it’s easy for a lot of us not to think about the history and economics of how layered systems can magnify bias. It’s easier to say Mormons are shallow than to reckon with the places where we still don’t belong. So people just debate why the seed of Mormon Literature hasn’t grown more, without ever asking how we water it.

We have failed, again and again, to build up secure literary institutions. We’ve put together plenty of wagon trains, we gather in makeshift camps. But if a writer doesn’t quit working on Mormon literature, it’s because we’re pioneer-stubborn. It’s not because we can see the promised land.

It feels like we could change that now. Our community has flourished in so many ways. It feels like we could bring together writers’ craft, readers’ efforts, and patrons’ resources to create some small and simple literary institutions of our own. It feels like the next generation still has a chance to feel encouraged. To find places and people to welcome them and tell them who came before, so we’re not always starting from scratch. To have a stage for their Mormon work—without having to build one out of cinder blocks and plywood like I did at first. To feel like they are building a resume that will be honored somewhere and not looked at askance. Other Mormon fields have made it further. As a community, we’ve invested in history. Some brave and gifted women and men, with the help of serious patrons, are making a living now while widening the scope of Mormon visual art. I could live to see a day when our faith not only needs my skills—but also welcomes them.

This is possible. It is by no means assured; it won’t happen without some people going out on a limb; there are bound to be missteps along the way, but we can build something. If you feel moved by what I am saying I hope you will reach out to me or to the people around you to see how you can use your time, talents, or resources to help build something. How you can carry forward our people’s perpetual dream.

I would love to see it. I would love to taste the fruits of a tended harvest.

But if not? I refuse to let that matter. I will write in the desert. I will search out the half-forgotten names of those who went before and glean what I can from them. I will sing the songs of our people, I will speak our language, I will find the fire in the words God gave us and beg it to burn just one more time. The wilderness has been good to me. I have lived off the old herder foods of milk and honey, and my work has blossomed as the rose.