Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective

When Sisters in Spirit first appeared, it was one of only a handful of scholarly works about Mormon women collectively (as opposed to works focusing biographically on an individual's experiences). It also broke ground as the first scholarly book to discuss several cultural issues affecting the self-identity of an American Mormon woman. Those who missed Sisters in Spirit in 1987 may want to take advantage of this new printing; its articles are still basic to a discussion of Mormon culture. Some of the articles seek to clarify the present through the perspective of Mormonism's past. Jill Mulvay Derr traces the rise and the fall and the signs of a rekindling of communal sisterhood. Linda P. Wilcox looks at the changing official views of motherhood and their effects on women's feelings of (in)adequacy. Linda King Newell provides one view of the role of such spiritual gifts as healing and speaking in tongues in the lives of women from Kirtland days to the present. Carol Cornwall Madsen explores the centrality of temple worship, its power and purpose, in the spiritual lives of "the first generation of Mormon women". She proposes that the meaning of the temple remains unchanged for women. The nine articles in Sisters in Spirit offer significant, though not definitive, accounts. As Grethe Ballif Peterson comments, "These working definitions [of priesthood] are limited. They come from only eight women, though they echo concerns heard from hundreds of women in dozens of settings. They are still in process and vary directly related to individual experiences"