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Margaret Blair Young (born 1955) is an American author, filmmaker, and writing instructor who taught for thirty years at Brigham Young University.
Young's published work includes the novels House Without Walls (1991), Salvador (1992), and Heresies of Nature (2002) and the short story collections Elegies and Love Songs (1992) (which won an Association of Mormon Letters award) and Love Chains (1997). [1] She also co-authored a trilogy of historical novels about Black Mormon pioneers titled Standing on the Promises with Darius Gray. The trilogy, published between 2000 and 2003, was republished in revised and expanded form in 2012 and 2013. [2] [3] [4]
Young scripted and helped direct a 2005 television documentary based on the life of Jane Elizabeth Manning James, "Jane Manning James: Your Sister in the Gospel." The 20-minute documentary has been shown at This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, Utah, the 2005 annual conference of the Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research (FAIR), and on public television (PBS). Documentary filmmaker Scott Freebairn produced and directed the film. More recently, Young served as the project director for the Utah chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society's film The Wisdom of our Years. In 2008, Young and Gray completed a long documentary titled Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons, which has been shown on PBS stations, in film festivals, and on the Documentary Channel. Her award-winning play, I Am Jane, also about Black Mormon pioneer Jane Manning James, has been produced throughout the country.[ citation needed ] Young has also authored encyclopedia articles on Blacks in the western United States, and has served as president of the Association for Mormon Letters. In 2014 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Whitney Awards and the Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters. [5]
Young’s recent efforts have been directed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she and her team are working to launch the film industry, which disappeared amidst the chaos of war and corruption in the 1990s. She has teamed up with Tshoper Kabambi, Deborah Basa, and Ephraim Faith on film initiatives. [6] They work with Bimpa Production in Kinshasa, which is producing a film that Young has scripted and that Tshoper Kabambi is directing. Young is also working on literacy and educational projects, and is teaching students at various schools throughout the DR-Congo how to create their own books, given the relative lack of books in the Congo. In Lodja, DR Congo, she works with Professor Abbé On'okundji Okavu Ekanga, author of Les Entrailles du Porc-épic: Une nouvelle éthique pour l’Afrique. Mr. Okundji returned to his home village in the Congo to help it recover from the Congo war of 1998-2004.
Young is married to English professor Bruce Wilson Young (born 1950). Bruce is a BYU, Columbia and Harvard graduate who has written multiple essays and the book Family Life in the Age of Shakespeare. [7] [8] [9] They are the parents of four children, including vocal performer and music instructor Kaila Lifferth and writer Robbie Blair.
During the history of the Latter Day Saint movement, the relationship between Black people and Mormonism has included enslavement, exclusion and inclusion, official and unofficial discrimination, and friendly ties. Black people have been involved with the Latter Day Saint movement since its inception in the 1830s. Their experiences have varied widely, depending on the denomination within Mormonism and the time of their involvement. From the mid-1800s to 1978, Mormonism's largest denomination – the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – barred Black women and men from participating in the ordinances of its temples necessary for the highest level of salvation, prevented most men of Black African descent from being ordained into the church's lay, all-male priesthood, supported racial segregation in its communities and schools, taught that righteous Black people would be made white after death, and opposed interracial marriage. The temple and priesthood racial restrictions were lifted by church leaders in 1978. In 2013, the church disavowed its previous teachings on race for the first time.
Mormon fiction is generally fiction by or about members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who are also referred to as Latter-day Saints or Mormons. Its history is commonly divided into four sections as first organized by Eugene England: foundations, home literature, the "lost" generation, and faithful realism. During the first fifty years of the church's existence, 1830–1880, fiction was not popular, though Parley P. Pratt wrote a fictional Dialogue between Joseph Smith and the Devil. With the emergence of the novel and short stories as popular reading material, Orson F. Whitney called on fellow members to write inspirational stories. During this "home literature" movement, church-published magazines published many didactic stories and Nephi Anderson wrote the novel Added Upon. The generation of writers after the home literature movement produced fiction that was recognized nationally but was seen as rebelling against home literature's outward moralization. Vardis Fisher's Children of God and Maurine Whipple's The Giant Joshua were prominent novels from this time period. In the 1970s and 1980s, authors started writing realistic fiction as faithful members of the LDS Church. Acclaimed examples include Levi S. Peterson's The Backslider and Linda Sillitoe's Sideways to the Sun. Home literature experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s when church-owned Deseret Book started to publish more fiction, including Gerald Lund's historical fiction series The Work and the Glory and Jack Weyland's novels.
Chris Heimerdinger is an American author who has written twenty novels for adults and young adults, most famously the Tennis Shoes Adventure Series. He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and most of his stories center on religious themes familiar to Latter-day Saints.
There are many works relating to Joseph Smith. These works cover Joseph Smith's his life, legacy, and teachings. Smith is the author of several works of scripture, and several personal histories, letters, and other writings. There have also been several biographies written about him.
Jane Elizabeth Manning James, fondly known as "Aunt Jane", was an early African-American member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and traveled to Utah as a pioneer. She lived with Joseph Smith and his family for a time in Nauvoo, Illinois. She traveled with her family to Utah, spending the winter of 1846–1847 at Winter Quarters, and was among the first of the pioneers to enter the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. As a black woman, James was not allowed to enter the temple during her lifetime and petitioned the First Presidency of the church multiple times to be endowed and sealed. As a result of her requests she was adopted as a servant into the family of Joseph Smith through a specially-created temple ceremony. She was posthumously endowed by proxy in the Salt Lake Temple in 1979.
Fred Emmett Woods IV is a Brigham Young University professor of Latter-day Saint Church History and Mormon Doctrine, an author specializing in Mormon migration and the Globalization of Mormonism.
Darius Gray is an African-American Latter-day Saint speaker and writer.
Dean Cornell Jessee is a historian of the early Latter Day Saint movement and leading expert on the writings of Joseph Smith Jr.
Blair Treu is an American film director. He directed Little Secrets and Wish Upon a Star. More recently he has teamed up with Brigham Young University (BYU) professor Stephen F. Duncan, KBYU-TV and BYU TV to create Real Families, Real Answers. He was also a codirector of BYUtv's Granite Flats. He graduated from BYU with a bachelor's degree in theatre in 1985.
The Association for Mormon Letters (AML) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 to "foster scholarly and creative work in Mormon letters and to promote fellowship among scholars and writers of Mormon literature." Other stated purposes have included promoting the "production and study of Mormon literature" and the encouragement of quality writing "by, for, and about Mormons." The broadness of this definition of LDS literature has led the AML to focus on a wide variety of work that has sometimes been neglected in the Mormon community. It publishes criticism on such writing, hosts an annual conference, and offers awards to works of fiction, poetry, essay, criticism, drama, film, and other genres. It published the literary journal Irreantum from 1999 to 2013 and currently publishes an online-only version of the journal, which began in 2018. The AML's blog, Dawning of a Brighter Day, launched in 2009. As of 2012, the association also promotes LDS literature through the use of social media. The AML has been described as an "influential proponent of Mormon literary fiction."
The AML Awards are given annually by the Association for Mormon Letters (AML) to the best work "by, for, and about Mormons." They are juried awards, chosen by a panel of judges. Citations for many of the awards can be found on the AML website.
Maureen Ursenbach Beecher is a historian and editor of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She studied at Brigham Young University (BYU) and the University of Utah. She worked in the History Department for the LDS Church from 1972 to 1980, and became a professor of English at BYU in 1981 while continuing her work in Mormon history at the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History. She published a popular book of Eliza R. Snow's writings.
The Religious Studies Center (RSC) is the research and publishing arm of Religious Education at Brigham Young University (BYU), sponsoring scholarship on the culture, history, scripture, and doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The dean of Religious Education serves as the RSC's director, and an associate dean oversees the two branches of the RSC: research and publications.
Mormon studies is the interdisciplinary academic study of the beliefs, practices, history and culture of individuals and denominations belonging to the Latter Day Saint movement, a religious movement associated with the Book of Mormon, though not all churches and members of the Latter Day Saint movement identify with the terms Mormon or Mormonism. Denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, by far the largest, as well as the Community of Christ (CoC) and other smaller groups, include some categorized under the umbrella term Mormon fundamentalism.
Eric Roy Samuelsen was an American playwright and emeritus professor of theatre at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He is considered one of the most important Mormon playwrights, and has been called a Mormon Charles Dickens or Henrik Ibsen. He won the Association for Mormon Letters (AML) drama award in 1994, 1997, and 1999, and was AML president from 2007 to 2009. In 2012 he received the Smith–Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters.
Corianton: A Story of Unholy Love is a 1931 American drama film based on the story of Corianton, the son of the prophet Alma in the Book of Mormon. Corianton appears only briefly in three passages in the Book of Mormon. However, as scholars Randy Astle and Gideon Burton point out, his story is one of the only stories in the Book of Mormon "with any sex in it", which has made it a popular subject of Book of Mormon-themed fiction and drama for more than a century.
Tim Slover is an American playwright and professor of theatre studies at the University of Utah.
Irreantum is a literary journal compiled and published by the Association for Mormon Letters (AML) from 1999 to 2013, with online-only publication starting in 2018. It features selections of LDS literature, including fiction, poetry, and essays, as well as criticism of those works. The journal was advertised as "the only magazine devoted to Mormon literature." In its first years of publication, Irreantum was printed quarterly; later, it was printed twice a year. A subscription to the magazine was included in an AML membership. Annual Irreantum writing contests were held, with prizes for short stories, novel excerpts, poems, and nonfiction awarded. The journal's creators, Benson Parkinson and Chris Bigelow, sought to create a publication that would become a one-stop resource where companies interested in publishing LDS literature could find the best the subculture had to offer. They also hoped Irreantum would highlight various kinds of LDS writing, balancing both liberal and traditional points of view.
Melissa Leilani Larson is an American writer and playwright based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mormon literature critic Michael Austin described her as "one of the true rising stars of Mormon literature." Producer Jeremy Long described her as the "best playwright in Utah." Her plays commonly feature women in leading roles, and some center around the faith of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Black segregation in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was a part of the religion for over a century. The LDS church discouraged social interaction or marriage with Black people and encouraged racial segregation. The practice began with church founder Joseph Smith who stated, "I would confine them [Black people] by strict law to their own species". Until 1963, many church leaders supported legalized racial segregation. David O. McKay, J. Reuben Clark, Henry D. Moyle, Ezra Taft Benson, Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, and Mark E. Peterson were leading proponents of segregation. In the late 1940s First Presidency members publicly and privately condemned white-Black marriage calling it "repugnant", "forbidden", and a "wicked virus".
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