Exponent II
A feminist forum for Mormon women and gender minority voices
They pulled you from me When your body Could not find its way. A rescue. I cried. Knowing you’d be spared The pain your brother was not. Your journey was quick: Hands like nets brought you Out of the waters Into breath. Emily Feuz Jensen is a writer, mother, cat-lady, and creativ…
I work in customer service. After hanging up on a rude customer, I scream obscenities, burst into tears, and rush outside to sit on our back porch, body curled over my knees. My dad — visiting from out-of-state, a calculated risk in August 2020, before vaccines and at the height …
Another mandate to shelter in place. I will have to call Mom, un-invite her to come to the Thanksgiving feast we’d planned. No key lime for Kim, no sleepover, no hotel pool. How could I forgive myself, Lady of Lonely Holidays, if I were the cause of her falling ill? Her cancer-ba…
On October 21, 2020, I watched the most important thing in my life burn to the ground — via a live internet stream. The Troublesome Fire — the second largest fire in Colorado history — took my family ranch, the Bar DM, at the headwaters of the Colorado River. I cannot even calcul…
Hotel Utah, completed in 1911, was a Beaux-Arts terra cotta architectural masterpiece on the corner of Main Street and South Temple in Salt Lake City. Topped with a beehive feature that spoke to Mormon ideals of industriousness, the building embodied the city’s early 20th-century…
Q: Why hasn’t the Mormon guy I’m dating held my hand yet? A:(a) He knows you just came home from your mission and doesn’t want to pressure you(b) The Mormon physical intimacy runway before marriage is short and he’s trying to stretch it out(c) He is secretly gay(d) These aren’t d…
Debra Marie Reynoso is an Emergency Room nurse, practicing for fourteen years, and concurrently in a Nurse Practitioner training program. This interview was conducted by Carol Ann Litster Young. What was your journey to becoming a nurse and deciding to do a nurse practitioner pro…
Book review of Katie Langston’s Sealed In a short essay for BYU Studies Quarterly (2015, 183—197), scholar and author Angela Hallstrom noted that “Mormon women have been particularly diligent writers of personal history, and their words have helped to preserve a nuanced, multifac…
“We will begin by singing — uh, by NOT singing — Hymn #. . . ,” the brand-new bishop said, called just one Sunday before church shut down for sixteen weeks. This is our first masked Sunday back. Intentional emptiness. Every fourth row has a white paper sign taped up: “Sit here.” …
Sacrament talk in Mar Vista Ward, Santa Monica Stake We didn’t make it to church last week. My three-year-old came down with something like the flu, so I decided we would stay home and keep our germs to ourselves. About a third of the way through our third viewing of The Secret L…
I once asked you, “why?” You said I was asking for it. Budding breasts peeking through a long sleeved crew neck. Bony arms accenting a lanky, curveless frame. Who can understand I didn’t want “it” though? I never asked to be afraid of sleeping on the sofa. I never asked to feel l…
In this interview, Sandra Clark Jergensen talks to Amber Hertzog Weiss about how her collage art explores faith and being through juxtaposing images of Jesus Christ, ancestors, temples, scriptures, and more. Your work is so vivid, surprising, delightful, and engaging. It uses Lat…