My Post-Mormon Publication List

It just hit me that I have written and done quite a lot of Mormonism and atheism related stuff, and I don't actually have a list of it all. Well, until now:

writings:

• Main Street Plaza: I've done more than 10 years of Mormon-related blogging, including regular features such as Sunday in Outer Blogness, the Brodie Awards, and the William Law X-Mormon of the Year Award,
• ExMormon: I wrote a novel composed of nine intertwined novellas about growing up Mormon and leaving the church (2006),
• I wrote a personal essay published in the 2011 Mormon-themed issue of Free Inquiry magazine (which inspired Mormon apologist Louis Midgley to publish some personal criticisms of me).
• I wrote a personal essay (short memoir) published in the collection Baring Witness, 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage (2017, University of Illinois Press)

presentations:

• I was interviewed about my novel and blogging in July of 2008 by Atheists Talk Radio (the other guest interviewed in the same program was P.Z. Myers).
• Sunstone Symposium 2009: I presented in the panel "Bridging Stereotypes Through Blogging"
• Sunstone Symposium 2012: I organized and presented in the panels "Who Gets to Say What Former Mormons Are Like?" and "Do Good Online Fences Make Good LDS Neighbors?" -- and presented in the panel "The Vagina Testimonies"
• I have organized Mathematics workshops at Camp Quest Switzerland in 2015 and 2016,
• I participated in a panel discussion with a former Muslim and a former Orthodox Jew for the "Abend der Apostasie" for "Welthumanistentag 2017" (in German).

organizations:

• I am the primary organizer/contact person for the Switzerland chapter of the post-Mormon network and of the Mormon Spectrum in-person communities.
• With Donna Banta, I am launching an indie publishing house: Mormon Alumni Association Books.

I think that's it. It's all I can think of at the moment...

Two great new Amazon reviews of ExMormon!

I am an ex-Christian, and not an ex-Mormon, however I identified soooo much with this book of stories. I was April, Lynn and Jill. It was the little things really - that I only had one "church friend" because our church was small and exclusive and there were only a few other kids my age. Especially poignant are the stories of discovering sexuality, and the shame and guilt that go with that in a conservative Christian environment. Like the first time reading the word "masturbation" and recognizing what it is I do (several times a week). Then rationalizing by only fantasizing about married sex.

It follows the stories of several different characters who's lives are all connected in some way. All the characters are written with love and humor, giving them depth and clear room to grow and learn, whether they remain in the faith or leave it. It shows the interactions between believers, doubters and unbelievers in a realistic way, far more so than any other book I've read on this topic. It also shows how leaving the faith comes in many different ways for different people.

I just felt that I had to say something, because I simply loved this book.

-- Aimee

Now in a spiffy new-and-improved illustrated edition, this book was written by a multi-talented former Mormon who's now an expatriate living with her family in Switzerland (she's also a blogger, and did her own illustrations for the book). It's a series of novellas with linked characters and plots, and centers around the experience of growing up Mormon. Some characters are true believers, some are skeptics or struggling, and others have left the Church. The stories explore conflicts between people in various states of Mormon-ness and the world outside Mormonism. While the book has some of the usual flaws of a first novel (e.g., sometimes it lacks scene-setting descriptions, or dialogue comes across as stiff and clunky), it also has a lot of insightfulness and humor, and is well worth a read for anyone interested in literary depictions of Mormons struggling with or leaving their faith.

-- Groggie

I try not to look at ExMormon's Amazon page too often, because it doesn't get that many reviews, and I'd rather be pleasantly surprised once or twice a year than disappointed once a week. ;^)

If you're one of the nearly-two-thousand people who've read ExMormon -- if you have a minute to go add an Amazon review (or even just recommend the book to your friends), I'd really appreciate it! Thanks!! :D

*** Update! *** I just saw that someone posted a recommendation of ExMormon over on Friendly Atheist's post about BYU atheists!!

I definitely feel for ex-mormons, especially in the beginning. I finished reading a good book online called Ex-Mormon.

Even though I didn't grow up Mormon, a lot of things were similar to my childhood in the church of christ. Its a good read if you have the time for it.

Wow, Thanks!!!

I opened up ExMormon's Amazon Page this morning (which I don't usually do because it rarely changes), but boy was I in for a pleasant surprise!!! I received this new review:

I bought the book after looking at the blog. I couldn't stop reading it because I could relate to it so much. I grew up Mormon and I haven't been a practicing Mormon since I left BYU as a teen/young adult. I could really relate to the Mormon culture and also relate to not fitting into that culture. I brought it with me on a Christmas family trip to Mexico and my Mormon relatives were into it also and wanted to read it. It was hilarious at times and also touched me to the core, this book. This is one of my favorite books ever, a book I could read again or pass on to jackmormon buddies and relatives, seriously love it! I'm so glad someone wrote about what it can be like growing up Mormon and in that culture.

I am totally floored! I can hardly imagine receiving a better compliment. This makes my day! (week, month, year... ;^) ).

I was already aware of the earlier nice review (by Book-o-philiac):

This was an amazing novel. I usually don't read fiction books, but decided to give this one a try, due to my leaving the LDS Church. It touched on so many of my experiences of growing up in the LDS Church and many of the reasons that I left. Anyone is considering leaving, even briefly should read this book.

Four stars and would recommend to anyone!

For that review, Book-o-philiac emailed me to tell me how much she liked the book. Naturally, I thanked her and asked her if she would please go write that on the book's Amazon page. ;^)

BTW, I haven't mentioned this in a while, but if anyone is interested in writing a review of ExMormon (for a blog or a publication or Amazon or whatever), just email me and I'll send you a review e-copy: chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot com.

Why are exmormons so sexy?

why?

I cannot help but ponder this question. Also, who is that sexy guy standing next to Chino? Is he exmo too?

“These beautifully flawed vessels”: The Conclusion of ExMormon!

I love to joke around. I've got the perfect joke for just this occasion. It's an oldie, so stop Me if you've heard it:

Way back when Jesus and I were creating the world, I turned to Him and said "Hey Jesus, let's create a really gorgeous mountainous region, with lakes and rivers full of fish, beautiful canyons, waterfalls, valleys, and peaks..."

Then Jesus said "But Dad, that'll never fly! Everyone will want to live there, and it will get so crowded, it will suck!"

Then I said "I'm one step ahead of You Jesus, My boy! Why do You think I created Mormons?"

Hahahahahahahahaha!

I'm just kidding, of course! The Mormons are My chosen people these days, so that's why I love having a little fun with them!

Now this whole idea of leaving the only true church is so completely nuts that I couldn't help but be fascinated when I noticed that some of My children were organizing a whole conference just for people whom I was planning on sending to outer darkness. Being omniscient and all, of course I knew it was going to happen. But that didn't make it any less entertaining to watch! More ->

The Making of "Exmormon"

Exmormon was written over the space of a year, and not in chronological order. This is an article I wrote in 2006 to explain how -- and why -- I wrote it.

One day I was on a business trip, and to pass the time in the evenings alone in my hotel room, I'd brought along a stack of old New Yorker magazines to read.

I noticed one of issues I'd brought had a story about Mormon teenagers in it. Mormonism is obscure enough that it's fairly rare to find something about Mormonism in the mass media, so -- like most people raised Mormon -- I was fascinated to find this and to see what they had to say.

My reaction: Not too bad.

But it kind of rang false in a couple of places. Particularly the fact that the Mormon girl in the story tries to talk the non-member kid out of taking his prescription drugs -- on the basis that it's a sin to take drugs. Of course recreational drugs are a big-time sin for Mormons, but medications prescribed by your doctor are not. It's not even a question of "if you're really devout" or something -- the idea that standard western medicine would be a sin doesn't exist in Mormon thought. (Maybe confusing Mormons with Jehovah's Witnesses or Scientologists?)

Then there was the fact that the Mormon girl was using sex as a tactic to draw people into the church and keep them there. My reaction was, "close but no cigar."

In my experience, Mormon teens really do (deliberately or not) use flirting and unfulfilled erotic desire to attract other teenagers to join the church. And I'm not going to claim that Mormon teens never have sex. But for a Mormon girl to give a guy a complete B.J. explicitly as a missionary tactic would be extremely atypical, to say the least. The result would be exactly what happens in the story, namely that the non-Mormon guy thinks: "Thanks for getting me off, bye! (sheesh, these Mormons are weirdos)."

Basically it read as if the author had had some sort of bizarre experience with Mormons when he was younger and was trying to make sense of it.

That story inspired me to a little challenge: Let me paint you a portrait of what it's really like to be a Mormon teenager.

The result of this challenge was the four-chapter novella "Youth
Conference."



Youth Conference really is fiction and not memoir -- in that the characters aren't just re-namings of real people, and the events didn't happen in quite that way or all together like that. Yet the story is very strongly reality-based and autobiographical.

I was fond of my little story when I wrote it, but it was too long to be published as a short story and too short to be a novel, so I wasn't sure what to do with it. I vaguely had the idea that I could continue the story by writing other segments of the main character's life, but I didn't want to add a bunch of junk to it just to make it longer, so I just left it sitting around on my hard drive for more than a year.

Around that time, I was a big-time regular on the Internet forum exmo-social, and the occasional discussion of Mormonism -- plus the writing practice the experience afforded me -- finally inspired me to write two more segments to the story: one where the main character (Lynn) goes to Brigham Young University (and concludes the church isn't true), and one where she's a young adult ex-Mormon dealing with her LDS (Mormon) family.

The BYU segment is less autobiographical, although it takes elements from life. I've said many times that I was already a non-believer when I started attending BYU, but that wasn't the story I wanted to tell this time. I didn't want to show BYU through the eyes of the angry young apostate, depressed about not having the opportunity to meet other young non-believers and resentful of the enforced religion. So I took my earlier attitude of believing (but just barely hanging onto it) and transposed that mindset onto a lot of the trappings and details of my real-life BYU experience.



One of the ideas I wanted to express in the BYU segment was that the problem with Mormonism isn't that it's not cool -- it's that it's not true. So I invented the character of Paige as something of a composite of a lot of people I knew who worked on the independent student publication The Student Review, who were these hip, non-conformist, liberal Mormons -- easily cooler than the shy, nerdy main character Lynn -- yet who were true believers. (see ask a Mormon Girl -- she was one of my colleagues during my Student Review days.)



To have Lynn meet the cool Mormon girl (Paige), I decided to hold a little illicit slumber party in a cabin. The Student Review actually did organize cabin slumber parties, although they were supervised (unlike the little unofficial party in my story). I remember thinking -- way back when I was attending such a sleepover with a whole bunch of young people of both genders sleeping in one big room -- that the situation had a huge amount of suppressed erotic potential. It seemed a terrible shame at the time that there was no one there at the sleepover that I wanted to share the flirty secret erotic spark with. True to form for a first novel, I opened up this box of regrets and re-wrote the scene the way it should have happened. Thus, the character of Rex Wendell was created.





When I finished the BYU segment -- even though the plot and story structure left something to be desired -- I was well-pleased.

I was a little worried about starting on the family segment (later called Temple Wedding) because I didn't want it to end up as some junk tacked on to the other two pieces, dragging them down. so I spent a lot of time planning what should be included.



First of all, I was fond of the character Rex and of his relationship with Lynn, so I wanted to bring him back. Yet I didn't want it to be that they'd gotten together very young and consequently had grown up with little relationship experience and would eventually start wondering about all the erotic exploration they'd missed out on. I didn't want them to have that kind of relationship. So I decided to have their initial relationship be brief -- as they were attending different universities -- and have them get together again on a permanent basis years later.

Aside from that, I had an easy time thinking of all of the things the LDS (Mormon) family members could do to irritate the exmo (apostate) characters ;^) but I was unhappy with the list because I felt it came off as whiny, and it wasn't interesting, and it wasn't a story. I had to find a way to balance it out so that I wasn't one-sidedly presenting the Mormons as the only bad guys.

Then I came up with the idea of having Rex buy beer for his sixteen-year-old younger brother. That was when I finally felt like "Okay, I can do this." That was the perfect scenario for this story because it was something I could easily see a young adult apostate doing -- and seeing as funny and no big deal -- that would make the Mormon parents completely flip out. (Thus illustrating their difference in perspective.)



The whole scene -- the dreadful dinner scene -- came to me all at once like a lightning bolt. That scene was really the turning point for me that changed this whole project from "look at me -- aren't I clever? I'm writing stories!" to "I have to publish this story and make a connection with people through it."

The funny thing is that for more than a year after writing that scene, I was patting myself on the back for writing such a thing from pure imagination since our family never had an explosive fight over the kids' apostasy like that. Since all of the circumstances and superficial trappings of the argument in the story were invented, I saw the scene as being wholly fictional.

It was only by reading my journal later that I realized how closely this scene portrayed (caricatured) a series of fights (and one in particular) that I had with my own parents. Again, like a proper first novel, it's all about exploring wounds that were smoothed over and forgotten but never healed; exorcising demons by reliving the bad parts and correcting them. In the fictional version (unlike reality), when Rex went off in disgrace, he had Lynn to tell him that everything would be okay.

The rest of the Temple Wedding section was just the icing on the cake. I was deliberately trying to cover a lot of details about Mormonism, and the story structure suffered for it. the funny thing, though, is that by throwing so many random things into the story blender, this segment ended up being kind of a seminal section, creating various character dynamics that I decided I wanted to explore further.

The part of "Temple Wedding" that I had the most fun with was the interaction between the Hobbs and the Wendells -- the one Mormon family with all of the signs of piety and righteousness (garden, uber-homemaker-SAHM, lots of kids on missions), and the other Mormon family with none of that but a lot more money. As both advantages are important for status in the LDS community, each family ends up jealous of the other.

When Lynn's three-part story was done, I gave it to my husband to read.

One his comments was that instead of being intimidated by Sister Hobbs' kids' (religious) accomplishments, Sister Wendell should have stood up for her (apostate) son and should have been willing to proudly recount his (non-religious) accomplishments to Sister Hobbs. I told him he was right, but that that wouldn't fit this story. I decided to go with his suggestion and write it up as a separate short story. Here I shifted voice for the first time, and instead of telling the story from Lynn's perspective, I told it from the perspective of Rex's younger brother Jared.

My plan was then to tack this story on to the little novel as an epilogue, but my husband caught me and told me not to. He pointed out that even though it has the same characters, it really doesn't follow as an epilogue -- it's completely separate.

I agreed, and decided that instead of using it as an epilogue, I'd use it as a starting point for a new story. I'd had fun with the Sam-Joe-Jared dynamic in "Temple Wedding" (which was an extension of the Wendells vs. the Hobbs), and I felt like I wanted to continue their adventures.

One of the million aspects of Mormonism I'd portrayed in the "Temple Wedding" segment was the connection between the mainstream Mormons and the (polygamist) Mormon fundamentalists. I'd gotten an email from a former Mormon fundamentalist (whom I'd met through exmo-social) full of details on the subject that he said I could use in my story if I liked.

One particularly dramatic incident the former fundamentalist had recounted (on exmo-social as well as in this email and his online autobiography) was that he had been allowed to attend a mainstream high school (despite being a fundamentalist), and there he fell in love with a mainstream Mormon girl. Naturally he explained his own beliefs to her -- what he'd been taught as true -- and when her parents got wind of it, they were horrified and forbade her from ever seeing him again. He wound up heartbroken (and maybe thinking it would have been better not to have gone out of his way to tell her about the fact that the mainstream LDS church is obviously in apostasy for giving up polygamy, among other things...).

His story was a poignant one. However, since my novel is fiction and not a retelling of some real person's life, I figured I'd take some details and piece together a different story. So I had my former-fundamentalist character Joe attending a normal high school (in my story it was because he had run away from his polygamist family), and had him fall in love with a girl from a mainstream LDS family, and had her family freak out when they discover she's frequenting a guy who was raised in polygamy, and have them forbid her from ever seeing him again.

But then instead of having her be a docile, obedient LDS girl who submits to her parents' wishes, I figured it would be more fun to have her be an ex-Mormon atheist girl who defies her parents and sees the guy anyway. I know I'm just being silly of course, but I liked that scenario much better. ;^)

Of course, to me it seems like a proper teen romance has to have a poignant, heartbreaking quality to it. It's a part of growing, learning, and gaining experience. So when I wrote Joe's romance, I kept the focus on Jared (Rex's younger brother), who loses out as he falls in love with the same girl. In the long run, however, he gains valuable experience.



And fortunately for Jared, he gets a great party scene. The party
sequence up through his chat about it with his brother Rex the next day is one of my favorite segments in the whole novel, including the parts that were written later.

At that point, I'd decided that I had two novels: Lynn's story and the sequel, Jared's story (eventually titled "Orem High"). My husband told me that novels don't really come in twos, and that I needed another to make it a trilogy. I was inclined to agree because I'd had fun so far and wanted to keep going.

(Despite this constructive advice, my husband hated Jared's story -- he apparently didn't like the idea that some dumb kid from Utah should get to have his own car and go to parties with girls, etc. -- and so he refused to read any more of my novel after that.)

I decided that next I wanted to explore a theme I'd alluded to back in the Youth Conference segment, namely the fear (as a chaste-not-entirely-by-choice Mormon teen) of things getting out of hand and getting pregnant as a result.

Looking around for a spot in my fictional universe to situate this story, I hit upon an off-hand comment I'd put in the BYU segment. In order to help illustrate the relationship between Jake and his jack-Mormon mom, I'd recounted how she'd laughed it off when Jake's uncle had made a disapproving comment about Jake going on a road trip to Las Vegas to gamble. I took that as a starting point, fleshing out that tiny anecdote as being a trip where Jake takes Rex and Jared's sister Jill to Las Vegas to get an abortion.



When I wrote this segment (eventually titled Saturday's Warrior), I had just re-read my teenage journals, so I wrote the whole thing in that voice and mindset. This prospect -- and this fear -- was clearly another big demon that had haunted my adolescence that I wanted to get out. I wrote the whole segment practically all at once, like a fever dream.

One nice thing about this part was that by this time I'd gotten over the idea that I needed to cover a list of particular details about Mormonism, so I could just write it as a free-flowing, reasonably-structured story. I ended up portraying additional aspects of Mormonism as they came up naturally in the story rather than bending and stretching the story to fit them.

Once I'd written Jill's story, I decided it was a prequel to Lynn's story and that I had a trilogy on my hands.

There were a few problems with this trilogy plan though. First of all, both Jill's story (Saturday's Warrior) and Jared's story (Orem High) were too short to be complete novels, even young adult novels. Then there was the fact that the Youth Conference segment of Lynn's story naturally came before Jill's story both chronologically and thematically. I felt like Jill's story really ought to be read between the first two parts of Lynn's story.

For a long time, I had a bunch of ideas on the back-burner for other stories to turn my "trilogy" into a "series" (called Exmormon) that could one day be published all together in a single volume. Eventually I realized that that single volume was where I really wanted to go with this work, so I selected a set of related stories I wanted to write up and include.

First of this new batch was the little interlude: Gratuitous Love Scene. I called it that as a joke because of the fact that Mormons always say things like "it was a good movie overall, but why did they have to include that one scene?" You know what scene they're always talking about. It doesn't matter if the love/sex scene is important to story, to Mormons if it's a sex scene, it's a priori superfluous and should be cut out.



In the case of the Gratuitous Love Scene, I added it because it was necessary for the overall story structure. It develops the relationship of Rex and Lynn, it's an important step for Lynn in terms of dealing with her conditioning, and I needed to include a sweet and romantic sex scene to counterbalance the more questionable sex scenes in Jill's story and Jared's story.

I know those who have read the "Gratuitous Love Scene" probably think I'm crazy to call this scene "sweet and romantic," but seriously I'm not at all a romantic person, so from my crazy perspective this is romance. ;)

After that, I decided exactly which additional stories I wanted to include. I wanted to add April's story (Young Women's) to flesh out her character a little better so that when her situation comes up in the BYU segment it doesn't seem like it's coming out of nowhere.



Additionally, I wanted to open with her story in order to illustrate what it's like for a young teenager dealing with church and trying to believe.



April's story was pretty easy to write since I wrote it mostly from my own journals and memories. The only tricky part was guessing what it would be like for a young lesbian to deal with all of the romance-and-temple-marriage indoctrination that the young women get. Basically I did my research by reading Queer 13 and The Indelible Allison Bechdel and did my best to extrapolate.



I wrote the wrap-up chapter next (Exmo Conference) which is just a fun little "what happened to everyone" conclusion.



Next I wrote Bordeaux Mission. I wanted to write that one because I've always been fascinated by LDS missionary stories, and all through my novel people talk about missions (with young Mormons, somebody's always setting off on one, or on one, or just back), so I wanted to include the actual experience. Additionally, in Jared's story I'd introduced the character Tanya -- who wasn't originally intended as a sympathetic character, but who ended up stealing the show in a lot of ways. So I wanted to explore her character further by giving her a new boyfriend -- someone with a little more self-confidence than Jared -- who wouldn't be intimidated by a woman who takes the lead. Thus the character of Spencer Hobbs was created.

I had a great time writing Spencer's story, largely because I got lots of fantastic mission details and inspiration from another person I met on exmo-social. With his help, I had an easier time writing Spencer as a clever jock, to balance out my character spectrum which had been hopelessly weighted a little too heavily towards scrawny math/science nerds (i.e. my own familiar social circle).

I was so pleased with the Spencer character that I had him play a leading role in the last segment I wrote (Polygamist, part 5 of the novel), which I added in order to introduce Joe's character and explain how it came to be that he was living with his uncle's family.



Writing a story in such a haphazard manner makes for kind of a random and confusing narrative structure. Yet the story is actually fairly well organized if you look at it thematically as a portrait of growing up Mormon and leaving the church as a young person:

1. Young Women's: Trying to be a good Mormon and live up to the church's expectations for you as a young teen.
2. Youth Conference: More serious indoctrination and the beginnings of cognitive dissonance.
3. Saturday's Warrior: The dark side of the resulting mindset.
4. BYU: The epiphany; realizing that it's not real or true.
5. Polygamist: Breaking free of the mindset.
6. Temple Wedding: Dealing with the family fallout.
7. Orem High: A second adolescence while exploring your new-found freedom.
8. Bordeaux Mission: Reflecting on your life, your choices, your feelings about the church.
9. Exmo Conference: wrap-up.

It's very clear that this is a first novel -- between the autobiography, the coming-of-age aspect, and the purging of those fantasies and demons that are closest to the surface. That's why I don't want to try to re-write some subset of this material into a more-reasonably-structured different novel. For the future, I'd rather start over with all new material and a plan. ;-)

Still, I think this one has a lot of potential interest and value as it is, which is why I'm posting it online, in hopes of making a connection with people who might relate to some of the characters and situations I've portrayed.


Don't forget -- the conclusion will be posted online this Tuesday!!

ExMormon -- The Final Chapter!

Many of you are no doubt aware that almost all of the novel ExMormon has been posted online -- serialized from here. And now it's getting to be time to finally post the last chapter! There's just one catch:

Remember how I've said that each of the individual novellas can be read alone? Even the gratuitous love scene. The stories are connected, but you don't need to have read the earlier ones to understand the later ones.

Well, that changes with this chapter.

The Exmo Conference chapter is a lighthearted wrap-up where Elohim watches how the various apostates' lives have turned out. But that means that you have to have read the earlier sections to get it. Fortunately, you have nearly a month. (And, according to my statistics, it's not hard at all to read any one of the eight-and-a-half novellas in one sitting.)

But if you want to pick and choose, here are the choices:

Young Women's: Slumber parties, sibling rivalries, and praying for a testimony are all on the agenda for a good Mormon girl like April.

Exmormon's Real Launch!!!

The final version of Exmormon is finally available from Amazon!!!



Those of you who have been following this blog are probably asking: "Wasn't it already available?" Here's the difference:

The earlier Lulu edition was a bit of a pre-print test run (without illustrations or ISBN). Now you can get the real published version -- with all of the illustrations and a new professional cover design and layout! Also, I've finally set it up so that you can order a PDF e-copy -- with all of the illustrations in color!

Note that I'm planning to donate the proceeds to Solar Aid and/or to the local conservation partnership with the Masoala National Park in Madagascar. (More about my reasons for this coming soon.)

I'm also starting on a publicity campaign. Here's my first ad, which I'm placing in the program notes of the Secular Student Alliance 2010 Annual Conference. It sounds like it will be a fun conference (I think Greta Christina will be there, among other cool people). I can't attend myself, but if you go, please be sure to admire my beautiful ad. :D

Bordeaux Mission begins Tuesday!!!

It's getting to be time for the last novella of the novel Exmormon: Bordeaux Mission!!!

"Bordeaux Mission" is the story of a young Mormon guy who is basically a good person -- and wants to be righteous -- but struggles on his mission. In Spencer's case, it isn't a problem of faith vs. doubt. The problem is that being on a mission is hard. Mormonism is a one-size-fits-all religion, but (as you might guess) it fits some better than it fits others.

To my LDS readers: You can read this story without fear -- it doesn't violate any standards. In fact, if it weren't contained in a collection called "Exmormon", I daresay you might not even guess that it was written by a non-believer.

Before we begin, I'd like to talk a little about how the criticisms in Holly's Mormon Lit theory post Story, Wikipedia, Story apply to this novella, and to Exmormon in general:

In a nutshell, Mormon writers just can't stop pausing the story to give wikipediesque asides explaining Mormon culture and jargon. (eg: I was talking to the bishop of my ward [Dear reader: a "ward" is like a congregation and the "bishop" is like its pastor].) The trick is to write a story that uses Mormon culture in a natural way -- without these annoying asides, and without leaving non-Mormon readers confused about what's going on. It's not easy.

The first segment I wrote, Youth Conference, was inspired by Walter Kirn's "Mormon Eden" (as I explained in Challenges and Pleasures of Mormon Lit). Like much of Mormon lit, Kirn's story gives off a strong vibe of "I'm gonna tell you what Mormonism is like!" and "Youth Conference" responds with "Now I'm going to tell you what being a Mormon teen is really like." So, yes, "Youth Conference" probably has a bit of a "Story, Wikipedia, Story" feel to it.

However, my style evolved over time, so the segments I wrote earlier (especially Lynn's story Youth Conference, BYU, and Temple Wedding) are more self-consciously explanatory than the segments I wrote later (such as Saturday's Warrior, Bordeaux Mission, and Young Women's). Actually, after writing "Temple Wedding," I basically decided that I'd finished explaining Mormonism. So Mormonism became the setting of the story, not the point of the story, and I feel like with Saturday's Warrior I first succeeded in doling out the Mormonism in a need-to-know basis that is both natural and clear. You can go read it and see if you agree. ;^)

With "Bordeaux Mission," there's the additional wikipediesque aspect that is found in almost all memoirs of foreign LDS missions: the cultural notes. On this point, I disagree with Holly. The cultural explanations in LDS mission memoirs can definitely be overdone, but I don't think it's quite the same thing as cultural explanations about Mormonism. When you're a Mormon kid -- swimming in Mormonism -- you're hardly conscious of it, or of how others' cultural experiences are different. On a foreign mission, you're absolutely aware of having learned a new culture and you're conscious of the fact that you're using what you've learned. It's a big part of the story. Then there's also the tension between the "missionary culture" and the ambient culture. (The LDS missionary culture was described in the comments here as being the most cult-like aspect of Mormonism.) That's a huge part of the missionary's experience, and it's absolutely central to the story of Bordeaux Mission.

So, I'm responding here to the lit critics who have complained about the fact that I've included an entire dialog in French, with translation. I haven't broken the rules out of ignorance. I broke the rule deliberately, for a reason, and that reason wasn't "to show off how amazingly fluent I am in French." ;^)

That said, I'll admit that the story contains specific details about France and Bordeaux in particular that I learned from personal experience and from talking to real-life mishies who were serving their missions in Bordeaux. (See my blog topic mishies for all of my real-life adventures with the LDS missionaries in France!)

The accuracy of the illustrations is limited only by my limited drawing skills. Re-reading the story (to prepare to post it) really made me miss that place! I hope you'll feel the same. :D

Sunstone exmo party and other fun in SLC!!

I hadn't been to Utah in seven years -- my last visit was long before I took up discussing Mormonism on the Internet -- so I was curious to have a look at this so-called "Main Street Plaza" I'd heard so much about.

(The group blog Main Street Plaza is actually named after the pedestrian passage separating Temple Square from the Church Office Building -- once a public road, it is now owned by the CoJCoL-dS, which prohibits gay people from kissing there.)

I had some fun touring the LDS sites with my brother. There's some interesting stuff in the Church History Museum, including the original golden Moroni statue and this Masonic-seeing-eye beehive quilt:



The Salt Lake Temple is a lot smaller than it looks in pictures (where they like to get close and point the camera up at it), and it doesn't help that they've surrounded it with other large and tall buildings.

Other surprises? Well, I saw a couple of Smarts, which I didn't expect:


I also saw an "erotic bakery" -- which I'd thought was just a joke that was made up for "The Simpsons". I would have gone to get a closer look and a picture, but it was on the other side of the road, and I'd gotten tired of crossing these crazy downtown streets that are eight lanes wide on every single block. (All of the main sites are within a few blocks of one another, but that doesn't mean they're anywhere near each other...)

Then I went to a fabulous party with some of the coolest folks in town:


I'd like to call it an Outer Blogness party, but some of these exmos' blogs aren't on the list yet. (Please leave a comment if you have the URL of any former/cultural Mormon blog that isn't on the "Outer Blogness" list yet.)



This picture illustrates why I sadly missed some of the Sunstone Symposium on Wednesday morning (including the Zelophehad's daughters panel and Margaret Toscano's presentation about God's genitals). I was really embarrassed, thinking, "Great, here I am giving a panel on overcoming stereotypes, and I miss the beginning of the conference because of a party-related headache..."

But that's not a stereotype or misconception -- it's totally accurate! When the exmo atheists come into town, partying is the first order of business. ;^)

Finished the illustrations for Bordeaux Mission!!

I meant to finish these before my vacation, but better late than never!




You can see the rest of the illustrations for this story here!

You can see that I've scheduled this segment to begin on September 22. I'm hoping that I'll succeed in getting my new edition ready by then: the complete book -- with all the illustrations and an ISBN -- that you can either buy as an e-book or order (reasonably priced) physical copies. We'll see if I can get it done in time! :D

A new review of Exmormon!

This just proves how insanely focused I am on my work at the moment: A new review of Exmormon appeared, and I didn't even notice it for two days! Please have a look, and then go read the book itself. :D

Please don't worry that my kids are being neglected during this bout of crazy-deadline-itis. As you can see here and here, Nico and Leo are in good hands.

And in case I haven't given you enough to read, there's a new round of great carnivals: Skeptical Parent Crossing, The Humanist Symposium, and the Carnival of the Godless!!!

And where did he serve his mission?

Sam was pretty lucky that his cousin Joe had come to live with him. The three of us were all in the same math class together, which meant that Sam got free help with his math homework every night while I only got help when they invited me over. I couldn't figure out how Joe could derive all those trig identities so easily. I mean, I could follow Joe's answers when he showed me, and so could Sam, more or less, but how the answers came to him in the first place was like some kind of miracle.

Chewing on my pencil and listening to Joe, I started wishing I had inherited some of the math talent my older brother Rex had gotten. He was a real whiz at math! He would be helping me with my homework himself if he weren't off at grad school.

We were finishing up the last few problems when Sam's mom called upstairs to us. "Sam! Is your friend Jared going to stay for dinner?"

"How 'bout it?" asked Sam.

"Okay," I replied.

"Okay, Mom," Sam yelled back downstairs.

"I just have to call my mom and tell her what time to pick me up," I said.

"Oh, yeah, I was going to ask you about that," said Sam. "How come you didn't drive today?"

"Oh, I'm being punished. I've lost my car privileges."

"What'd you do?" asked Joe, laughing.

Read the rest of the story ->

Warning for "Orem High"

I'm afraid this next segment (Orem High, beginning this Tuesday!) is probably the section that most needs a disclaimer. I'll divide the warning into two parts: (1) the name, and (2) the sex.

the name

Why did I call this segment "Orem High"? I've never been there -- I've never even seen the building.

I called it "Orem High" because all of the segments of the novel Exmormon are about typical Mormon life experiences (like attending Youth Conference or going on a mission). This one is about attending high school in the heart of Mormondom, and I think the title "Orem High" evokes that.

At the same time, all of the various fun facts about Mormonism and place details in the book are real. So it would be a little odd -- after having Lynn pick up her BYU mail in the Cannon Center -- if these characters were attending a fictional high school, given that we all know they live in Orem. So I asked a guy from Orem which high school these kids would be attending (given where they live with respect to other stuff in Utah Valley), and he said it would be Orem High. So there you have it.

The one thing I'm most concerned about is that faithful Mormons who are current or former students there might google the name of their school and be annoyed to find a story in which one of the naughtier students throws a party involving, well, drinking and sex. If you, dear reader, are one of those people -- and you're annoyed right now -- then please leave a comment and we can discuss it. That said, I don't think I'm going out on a limb to suggest that there are teenagers all over who will throw questionable parties, even in Orem.

the sex

As with the other two sex scenes, I've been careful to include only as much detail as I think is necessary to understand the story. That may be too much for some, so if you're one of those people, just read the chapter titles and you can probably guess which one to skip. In some ways this sex scene may be more controversial than the others, in some ways it may be less, but since nobody complained about the other ones, I don't anticipate having any problems with this one.

So enjoy, and read responsibly! :D

cross-posted on Main Street Plaza.

A reader with a story

I got another email from a reader the other day:

I just wanted to thank you for the very accurate and beautiful piece you've put together called Ex-mormon. It is so well put together that I felt like I had been shot into the past.

I was "mormon" too at one point. Recently I've been putting my own historical story together, not just for me, but for others like me who have had that epiphany and need an outlet and to not feel alone. I was looking through Google in hopes to see an example or something for guidance and found it in your stories.

I'm always happy to get these sorts of letters because that's basically why I wrote Exmormon: to make a connection with other people by exchanging stories and comparing experiences. And it turns out that this reader has an interesting exmo story of her own to share, and she allowed me to post what she's written so far for all of you on Main Street Plaza here: Mormonism is for the “Saints” who can afford it.

p.s. I know I've let the ol' blog here grow a little slow lately -- it's mostly because the discussion has livened up on Main Street Plaza (not to mention Rational Moms), and there's only so much of me to spread around. ;^) But you know these things go in cycles, and I have plenty more fun stuff planned for this space! :D

Temple Wedding

begins tomorrow!



Just sayin'.

p.s. If you've been following Exmormon, please feel free to mention this on your own blog or favorite forum! ;^)

Exmormon, the Musical!

This is a letter I received the other day from a reader, posted with permission:

Dear C.L. Hanson

I have spent all of my limited free time in the last week voraciously reading the online portions of your novel Exmormon (I was so disappointed when I discovered the last parts weren't available and I'd have to wait for lulu to ship it). I really have nothing of great insight to add, other than to say I really appreciated it. As an exmormon lesbian feminist expatriate I can scarcely describe how much I identified with it. The scenes from the Youth Conference dance brought back so many awkward and hilarious memories, even though I actually liked the dancing in a circle with the girls and platonic friends part, whether that was to do with how genuinely entertaining my avant garde church friends were (one of the boys even had a beard! imagine, and one of the girls had two sets of earrings and was therefore Satan's handmaiden) or how little I actually cared about the boys except as some abstract status symbol, I'll never know. I also don't think I've ever been more gratified in my decision not to go to BYU (not that I haven't been pretty glad of it for awhile now).

At lot of Mormon lit is either so positive and upbeat that it seems false, or at least the experience of someone far more popular and faithful than I, or so completely negative that it misses what it was really like growing up in the church. Your book really reminded me of my life, and I impatiently await the arrival of the rest of it.

Sincerely,
Sabayon

PS: I can't wait to explain to my brother that he can drink beer!
PPS: I don't really think you should make it into a musical.

****

On an unrelated note, today is carnival day!!! So be sure to have a look at the fabulous post roundups on the Carnival of the Godless #97 and the Humanist Symposium #23!

And I'll be hosting the next Carnival of the Godless, so I hope you'll all submit some great posts here!!!

It's fun to be an exmo!

In honor of my radio interview, Ray Agostini was kind enough to write a post here on things I've posted about how cool the exmo community is, and about how much fun it is to be an exmo!!!

Now you may be asking yourself "What's cool about having been part of an organization that is full of institutionalized sexism, racism, and homophobia, one which is actively fighting for public discrimination against homosexuals, one whose culture has emphatically embraced consumersim, not to mention that whole polygamy can 'o worms?" But the thing is that as an exmo -- a non-believer -- you're not obligated to convince yourself that any of those things are good (or inspired by a supposedly loving God, etc.). Instead, you can offer constructive criticism on such points as a friend and family member while focusing on what's fun about being a part of the Mormon experience!

Here's one thing I like about it:

Being part of Mormonism is like being from an exotic foreign country with its own history, traditions, culture, and even language to some degree! (or jargon at least...) Let's face it: being a white person from midwest U.S.A. is, well, a little bland. And (no offense, Christians, but) what is more boring than being from mainstream Christian stock like everybody else? Compare that to following the "American Mohammed" into the new world religion and looking back on making the trek across the plains to the wild west. And now, generations later, we have all that and mountains of jello jokes!!

What more could you want? :D

Me & P.Z!!!

I met P. Z. Myers this morning when he and I were both guests on Atheists Talk!!! I had a total blast!!! I could write all about it here, but why not just listen for yourself? The podcast is (or will be) available here.



So if you were wondering what I sound like, here's your chance to find out! And as a bonus, you can find out what C. V. Rick sounds like (since he called in with a question), not to mention Tangled Up in Blue Guy (the host of the show) and Bjorn (who interviewed me). The other person in the above picture is Lynn Fellman, who interviewed P. Z.

Note to my LDS readers: my interview was pretty Mormon-friendly -- download it and see for yourself. My mom even said I did a good job!!!

(How'd my mom find out I was going to be on Atheists Talk Radio? Not sure, but it probably has something to do with the fact that I publicly announced it on my blog...)

BYU wrap-up

I hope you've enjoyed the five-chapter novella BYU which is part 4 of my novel Exmormon. Now all that remains is the bonus chapter (Interlude: Gratuitious Love Scene) which I'll be posting tomorrow.

Part 4 (+ interlude) marks the turning point in the novel, and not just because of the deconversion scene (which you'll note I ran on April Fool's Day out of courtesy to believers who might be happier thinking that part is just a joke). Additionally, in this novel about growing up Mormon, the first half has been mostly about girls, and the second half will be more about boys.

Now I have to get my drawing pencils out again and prepare the illustrations for Part 5: Polygamist, which I'm planning to start serializing on June 3!!!