Review
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Title: The Book of Queer Mormon Joy
Editor: Kerry Spencer Pray
Publisher: Signature Books
Genre: Non-Fiction/Essays
Year Published: 2024
Number of Pages: 233
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-56085-470-8
Price: $19.95
Reviewed by Conor Hilton for the Association of Mormon Letters
The Book of Queer Mormon Joy is a diverse, wide-ranging, collection of essays revealing the breadth and depth of queer Mormon experiences. Kerry Spencer Pray gathers together a wide assortment of voices in this collection demonstrating that there is no single story for queer Mormons, joyful or otherwise.
Queer Mormon stories have often been marked by sorrow and tragedy (and those markings still persist on the margins of this collection). There are lots of historical, sociological, and other reasons for this, but those past stories have failed to capture the full, lived reality of queer Mormons. The Book of Queer Mormon Joy begins to correct that—insisting that queer Mormon stories can, and often are, joyful.
The collection is rooted in the Mormon scripture that we “are that we might have joy.” The essays here reflect a diversity of perspectives on what joy is, weaving together complex emotions to articulate individual visions of joy. For some of the essays, joy is marked by the persistence of hope, even in dark situations. For others, joy is a quiet defiance of the strictures of society, the institutional church, family, or other social norms. For even others, joy is something in between.
The Book of Queer Mormon Joy reflects diversity in both the expressions of queerness and Mormon-ness of its authors. This diversity will no doubt challenge some readers, in I hope, productive ways. I found myself challenged as I was reading, wondering what was “Mormon” about particular essays (joining a long-standing tradition of debating the boundaries of ‘Mormon literature’) or wondering what was truly joyful in certain stories. This challenging diversity is, ultimately, a strength. While it meant that not all of the essays resonated with my own queer Mormon experience, with my own queer Mormon joy, it expanded my own sense of what queer Mormon joy could be.
There are too many excellent, memorable, moving, delightful moments in the collection to highlight all of them, so I’ll draw attention to just a handful that will remain with me.
- Troy Williams describing his mother’s funeral and releasing her ashes with an Elvis impersonator in tow.
- Jaclyn Foster’s delightfully shrug-y descriptions of gender.
- Jessica Woodbury’s weaving together thoughts on eggplant and polyamory and her own relationship biography.
- Becca Appel-Barrus on the particular pleasure of a surprising, delightful, early romance, found in an unexpected place.
- Skyler on the quotidian queer (and Mormon) joy and resistance of simply existing.
The Book of Queer Mormon Joy is a revelation—a revelation that challenges the hegemony of the tragic queer Mormon story, a revelation that pushes us to reconsider what joy even is, a revelation that offers us a taste of what it could mean that there is no end to love. May this collection be the beginning of many more joyful and otherwise, non-tragic, queer Mormon stories being told. And may we all be surprised and delightfully provoked by the possibilities of queer Mormon joy contained in these pages.