Exponent II
A feminist forum for Mormon women and gender minority voices
What did we possibly have in common? How would we work together? Wouldn’t she be frustrated by my crazy-busy life? . . . I didn’t think she would be the friend I desperately needed. Yet, she was. The full content of this post is available to subscribers. Subscribe now or log in!
Book review of The Book of Mormon For the Least of These, Vol. 2 by Fatimah Salleh and Margaret Olsen Hemming I have taught the 10-11-year-old class in Primary for six years. While teaching this age group isn’t without its challenges, I do like that I can focus on teaching them t…
Were we actually friends? Or was He more like a benevolent caretaker and I was forever in his debt?
Where’s Huldah? Missing (Female) Prophet in Come, Follow MeBy April Young-Bennett | Published July 14, 2022 God’s chosen people fall into apostasy. The prophet warns them that wickedness leads to destruction. They counsel with the prophet and repent. They follow the prophet. This…
Galilee, a crystal wave of scales falls into a boat. A tiny girl, Miriam, picks up a sardine, holds the wiggling fish in her palm. 1. Dripping with liquid beads, I am hasty, out of water, for the crackle of heat, coals for roasting. I tend the fires and turn the spits as fish ski…
I am stretched out on a couch in Richmond, Virginia, PCR-tested and fresh off an evening flight from JFK. Only a few hours ago, I was at work in Brooklyn, in a room swarming with seventh graders, not quite believing that for the first time since the pandemic started I was going t…
The church often finds itself at odds with the LGBTQIA+, or queer, community, due to the doctrine that marriage is between a man and a woman. Too often, members debate if and how they should support their queer siblings. Many people turn to attitudes expressed by the phrase “hate…
I have always known friends were key to my happiness. Give me a good friend and I can weather almost anything. The full content of this post is available to subscribers. Subscribe now or log in!
Like soil too heavy with clay, my soul needs amendment. Peat and gypsum balance the loam, but I’ll tend my mind with words. Stories to aerate, puncture assumptions, and poems like a hoe through neglected beds. Add a sprinkle of scripture to green up grudges and turn the biases la…
The “Best” Books
A chance conversation at a family reunion saved me from a life of scrupulosity. I was thirteen or fourteen, an earnest middle school student, when I fell into conversation with my cousin’s girlfriend who was in attendance. “I feel guilty reading books that aren’t the scriptures,”…
“It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf.” This quote is from a dog-eared page in a well-worn copy of Ender’s Game that followed me through elementary, middle, and high school in Provo, Utah, and has come to live on my bedside table in London and in my school bag as I com…