The Book of Mormon Girl: A Memoir of an American Faith
Joanna Brooks
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN: 1451699689
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In her sweet, funny, and impassioned memoir The Book of Mormon Girl, Joanna Brooks sheds light onto one of America’s most fascinating but least understood religious traditions.
From her days of feeling like “a root beer among the Cokes”—Coca-Cola being a forbidden fruit for Mormon girls like her—Joanna Brooks always understood that being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints set her apart from others. But, in her eyes, that made her special; the devout LDS home she grew up in was filled with love, spirituality, and an emphasis on service. With Marie Osmond as her celebrity role model and plenty of Sunday School teachers to fill in the rest of the details, Joanna felt warmly embraced by the community that was such an integral part of her family. But as she grew older, Joanna began to wrestle with some tenets of her religion, including the Church’s stance on women’s rights and homosexuality. In 1993, when the Church excommunicated a group of feminists for speaking out about an LDS controversy, Joanna found herself searching for a way to live by the leadings of her heart and the faith she loved.
The Book of Mormon Girl is a story about leaving behind the innocence of childhood belief and embracing the complications and heartbreaks that come to every adult life of faith. Joanna’s journey through her faith explores a side of the religion that is rarely put on display: its humanity, its tenderness, its humor, its internal struggles. In Joanna’s hands, the everyday experience of being a Mormon—without polygamy, without fundamentalism—unfolds in fascinating detail. With its revelations about a faith so often misunderstood and characterized by secrecy, The Book of Mormon Girl is a welcome advocate and necessary guide.
soft yellow chain. “Now, if you are to lose your virtue before you marry, I want you to remember, you owe me a pearl necklace.” Perfectly composed, I shook LeVar Royal’s hand and left his office. I have no idea what happened to the necklace—did I shove it in the back of a dresser drawer? did I throw it in the bushes?—other than to say that I know I never wore it. • • • So important it was to keep our virtue about us that our church leaders reserved entire weeknight meetings to offer us strict
followed, I met other BYU professors who modeled for me what had yet been the great unmapped possibilities of Mormonism: a life of searching inquiry, fearless because we knew all truths pointed finally to the glory of God. I met seventy-year-old physicists who took me into their basement offices in the Carl F. Eyring Science Center, down among the giant particle accelerators, and patiently listened to an eighteen-year-old girl unbend the limbs of her mind. I met psychology professors who had
got up and went to church. I kept going, I kept going. I sang hymns and taught Sunday School classes, no matter how desolate I felt inside. Sometimes I found refuge among the Korean- and Spanish-language Mormon congregations of Los Angeles, Mormon places unpenetrated by the purge. Sometimes I visited a gray-haired waitress at Canter’s Jewish deli in the Fairfax district, she who brought me my first plate of matzah brei, and in a spirited mix of English, Yiddish, Spanish, and Hungarian told me how
summer vacations with Utah cousins, or piled their old clothes into bundles for the Deseret Industries, our special chain of Mormon thrift stores across the American West? In my third-grade classroom, I was the only one. And when I went to birthday parties, I made sure to check if I was the only Mormon girl. For then I would have to ask if I could please have a root beer instead of a Coca-Cola like all the other children were having. Because it was our rule that we did not drink Coca-Cola, or Dr
Basque, who made Pearl a home under the palm trees in a working-class suburb and helped her support and care for her mother until the day she died. This was their triumph: that unlike the generations of pioneer mothers and daughters before them, Maude and Pearl came all the lonely miles together. My grandmother married outside the faith and never held what others might consider an important church assignment or calling. She did not receive her temple endowments until she was well into her