Caroline Kline - Mormon Women at the Crossroads: Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness

Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness

CAROLINE KLINE

2022 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kline, Caroline (Caroline Esther), author.

Title: Mormon women at the crossroads : global narratives and the power of connectedness / Caroline Kline.

Description: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021057722 (print) | LCCN 2021057723 (ebook) | ISBN 9780252044366 (cloth) | ISBN 9780252086434 (paperback) | ISBN 9780252053351 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Mormon womenReligious lifeMexico. | Mormon womenReligious lifeBotswana. | Mormon womenReligious lifeUnited States. | RaceReligious aspectsChurch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Classification: LCC BX8643.W66 K55 2022 (print) | LCC BX8643.W66 (ebook) | DDC 289.3/32082dc23/eng/20220119

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021057722

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021057723

I am indebted to many individuals who have supported and assisted in the production of this book. First, I extend my deepest thanks to the many anonymous narrators who trusted me with their stories and generously shared their insights and experiences. The hours I spent with these women were a privilege and a pleasure.

I will always be grateful for the outstanding support offered by Silvia Carlson, April Carlson, and Juanita Ceballos Fernandez, without whom I could never have conducted the research project in Mexico. Silvia and Juanita connected me with a network of Latter-day Saint women in Veracruz, arranged interviews, and were in all ways generous in their support of this project. I will never forget the many hours of hospitality and help Juanita and her family offered me, as well as Juanita's work transcribing dozens of interviews. Silvia was an excellent interpreter, and April a skilled interviewer and translator, as well as an insightful colleague. I look back and find it miraculous that I found such an amazing group of women to help carry out this project in Mexico.

I also thank the many people who helped facilitate and carry out the research trip in Botswana, in particular, Karen Torjesen, Deidre Green, and the Mokgares. My time in Botswanaand most especially the many hours I spent talking to women thereare experiences I will never forget.

Advisors and colleagues have been instrumental in the formation and development of this project. I particularly thank Patrick Mason for his helpful comments and support throughout the years. He generously guided me throughout the process and toward the University of Illinois Press for publication. I'll always be grateful. Claudia Bushman, who began the Mormon Women's Oral History Project at Claremont Graduate University, has a special place in my heart. She first introduced me to the method of oral history, and taking her classes on Mormon women was a highlight of my graduate school career. I'm grateful for her vision and belief that the words of everyday women have infinite worth and meaning. I extend my heartfelt thanks to Joanna Brooks for helping me shape the project and for offering helpful feedback on the chapters.

As I've readied this manuscript for publication, others have stepped in and offered their insight and encouragement. Heather Sundahl has been a wonderful reader, commenter, and cheerleader. Whenever I felt stuck, knowing that I could turn to Heather made all the difference. Emily Clyde Curtis has similarly offered both moral support and skilled close reading. Liz Johnson, a former director of the Mormon Women's Oral History Project, spent many hours formatting the oral histories I conducted and entering them into the archive. My deepest thanks to these wonderful friends, and the many more who are unnamed, who believe wholeheartedly in the importance of telling women's stories. I'm also grateful to Dawn Durante and my anonymous reviewers, who offered incisive and helpful suggestions for sharpening up the manuscript.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the many women in the Latter-day Saint community whose insights have been particularly helpful to me as I've grappled with issues of gender, race, and culture within Mormonism. Kalani Tonga, Mica McGriggs, Bryndis Roberts, Amy Hoyt, and Kay in Botswana have offered me their wisdom and their feedback.

Finally, I thank my family. My husband Mike is always the first reader of my drafts and consistently offers good advice as to where I can cut the fat from my chapters. Moreover, he is the best of partners and has supported me and this project without hesitation from the beginning. I end with my gratitude to my mother Helen, who has helped me in a thousand ways throughout this project and throughout my life. She has been an unfailingly wise, generous, and exceptional parent and friend.

I asked Luciana, Do you think that men and women are equal in the Mormon church? It was my second week in Veracruz, Mexico, and I had just spent an hour asking this older woman about her childhood, the challenges she has overcome in her life, and the best and hardest parts of being a Latter-day Saint woman. Through my colleague, who was interpreting for us, I had learned about her difficult marriage, which ultimately ended in divorce, and the way her adopted faith had sustained her in the challenging years of navigating single motherhood.

Her brow furrowed a bit at my question. She looked perplexed. It was the same look several other Mexican women had given me when I asked about their perspectives on and experiences with gender equality in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said, Pienso que s [I think so]? her voice lilting up, as if she were asking a question.

I noted from the beginning the discomfort that questions about gender equality provoked in many of the women I interviewed. I felt bad that this topic was unsettling, but I continued to ask about it because women's status and perspectives on gender were central concerns of mine. It would take dozens more oral life history interviews with Latter-day Saint women in Mexico, Botswana, and the United States before I came to realize why this question was unsettling: it led them to suspect that I was evaluating their lives and stories through a lensthat of gender equalitythat did not fully reflect their dominant moral concerns or paradigms.

They were right.

I had embarked on this project to explore the worldviews and navigations of Latter-day Saint women of color in the United States and the global South with a commitment to honor these women's stories and to let their concerns and emphases expand my inquiry. As a tradition born in the United States in the nineteenth century and still predominantly directed at the highest levels by white male leaders in the United States, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints experienced significant membership growth in the global South in the latter half of the twentieth century. Filled with paradoxes and tensions, not the least of which revolve around race and gender, Mormonism has proved itself to be a vibrant new religious movement, requiring much of converts but also delivering high levels of satisfaction to many of its practicing adherents. How and why women of color in Mexico, Botswana, and the United States adopt and adapt this American-born faith into their particular contexts and how issues of gender register to them in their diverse positionalities were central questions of mine.