There is a lot of yet untapped potential in this genre for Mormon writers, and the worst thing we could do is merely imitate the current fashions.

Not that I’m in Mormon literature neck deep but it seems much of what is out there is on opposite poles of thought. It’s finding the chink the the gospel armor to enable the death blow or skittering the surface to avoid the depths where the hard questions are. Whether narrative or creative, essay or non-fiction, the title isn’t as important as getting the meat we’re hungry for.

Thanks for the mention of quality works, I’ll look them up and go a little deeper in the pool.

And Kristine, thanks for your response. You’re right–the stuff we’re publishing can’t rival “Easter Weekend.” But there’s a lot of important writing going on. You and Rosalynde both rightly pointed out the limitations of the essays in The Mother in Me, but let’s bear in mind how revolutionary it was for DB to publish such a volume. If we’d gone any farther toward the edge in form or content we would have been denied that audience, and I felt it was important to try to bridge the gap.

Likewise, there’s all kinds of territory we haven’t covered within the pages of Segullah, but there are important reasons why certain boundaries have been drawn, both in terms of form and content. We’re trying to open up new realms of discourse in the Mormon mainstream, and in order to do so we can take only so many steps away from the center. Our next anthology will be self-published and so we’ll have more freedom than we did with The Mother in Me, but still we’ll keep an eye on the comfort level for average readers. Boundaries can only be effectively challenged a little at a time, and there are some that we’re not interested in challenging at all.

It’s a great post, Kristine. I responded to the parts that chafed but neglected to point out the many parts that really resonated with me. The whole topic is, of course, one of my favorites and I’m delighted to see you explore it. I especially loved the image of the thin golden thread–that will stay with me for a good long while.

And I’ve said this before (and am remiss in not doing so above) but the Segullah set up is genius for providing a bridge from blogging to the more crafted personal essay.

And you’re right that the vagaries of literary fashion don’t necessarily tell us anything useful about defining a genre. And, in the end, it wasn’t really the genre I was after, but a style, a fashion. I started by thinking about genre and category, but ended up somewhere rather different. Which makes my post performative of at least the meandering, not-linearly-argued nature of the essay, at least. And also mistaken in the ways you point out. Thanks.

Creative nonfiction as a genre includes the personal essay.

The difference between a personal narrative and a personal essay is that the former tells a story for the sake of story, and the latter uses storytelling elements (to some extent, at least)for the purpose of exploring an idea. Some personal essays are written entirely in scenes, like a novel. Others are very talky, with a lot of “tell” and very little “show.” Like spiffed-up internal journalism.

I take issue with the point that there are only a handful of Mormon personal essays out there. Hello: Segullah has published a dozen issues full of them!

I agree that the formulaic essay can be wearying. I think it’s important, though, for Mormon women to write even if we tend to fall back on this form. We have to start somewhere, and those of us who master the more predictable essay are more ready to branch out into more experimental and complex writing.

Creative nonfiction as a genre is benign. The kind of postmodern, self-deprecatingly sophisticated, fact-based literary writing Kristine is rolling her eyes at does not define the genre any more than the same flavor of imaginative writing defines the genre of “fiction.” It just so happens that this wearying flavor of prose has been in high style at the same time the genre has grown wings. But the genre itself can and will encompass a huge spectrum of writing styles, and has incredible potential.

So do you think the personal essay impulse is different in quality than the testimony-bearing impulse in Mormons? I’ve been thinking about them as related, but perhaps you are drawing out a difference. In Gene’s work I do get that sense of open-endedness and question that is also very Mormon at the bone. Williams’ work, as much as I admire it, seems to me in many ways not Mormon in its feeling and moods—not that I am trying to police the boundaries of a pure Mormon canon, just that I don’t recognize the interior emotional setting, despite all the local detail of its geographical setting.