The last week or so has been kind of bittersweet from my perspective. The Whitney Awards were announced, and while I was very pleased to have been a finalist, I was unsurprised to discover that I didn’t win the award in my category. (The person who did win the award, Jamie Ford, is a very fine author whose book, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, is the one I thought probably would win, so I’m not complaining.)
Posts Tagged ‘homosexuality’
Mixed News
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010Review of No Going Back in U of U Paper
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010A positive review of No Going Back was published in today’s issue of The Daily Utah Chronicle, the newspaper of the University of Utah.
Thoughts on Kushner, Angels in America
Thursday, February 25th, 2010Several years ago, prompted by a non-Mormon friend, I read Angels in America, a set of two plays set in New York City in the mid-1980s, written and performed in the early 1990s, that won multiple awards (including a Pulitzer). The play is largely about homosexuality, AIDS, and political conservatism. Several of the characters are Mormons, though Tony Kushner (the playwright) is not.
My reaction (which I initially posted on AML-List, and which was later published in more polished and expanded form in Irreantum, the journal of the Association for Mormon Letters) was that despite the Mormon characters and some Mormon iconic symbology, I didn’t really feel that the play was about Mormons or Mormonism in any meaningful way. At the time I wrote my reaction (2003), that was a perspective I didn’t see reflected or even much addressed in discussions of the work — bafflingly so, considering that 3 out of 9 main characters are supposedly Mormon.
So I wrote my response, which I’ve decided to repost below, in the hopes that perhaps this will prompt a little more discussion or at least awareness on this issue.
Positive Review at A Motley Vision
Thursday, February 4th, 2010Earlier today, a positive review of No Going Back was posted at A Motley Vision: Mormon Arts and Culture blog. That’s one of the blogs where I hang out, so the positive response is particularly gratifying.
NGB Article in BYU Daily Universe
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010On January 19, 2010, the Daily Universe, BYU’s student newspaper, ran a feature article on No Going Back that made the paper’s front page, sharing headlines with Haiti. They’d interviewed me the week before, and apparently also contacted Rex Goode, whose discussions on AML-List helped spark my initial ideas for the story, and Steve Walker, my old BYU English professor who read and endorsed the book in glowing terms.
No Going Back Discussion Questions
Thursday, January 7th, 2010One of my main motivations in writing No Going Back was to stimulate discussion, both about the book itself (hey! I’m an author, I like feedback; live with it) and about the topics it addresses.
Over Christmas break, I drafted a set of questions that I thought might help prompt interesting discussions among readers of my book. Sadly, the notebook where I wrote down my ideas disappeared… So here’s Take 2 at some “official” No Going Back discussion questions. Please feel free to post responses, additional suggested questions, etc. (more…)
Top Ten Reasons Why No Going Back Is a Great Read!
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009Yeah, I’m still on Christmas break. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to post something. And so…
Getting comments from readers of my novel has given me a new appreciation of Tolkien’s observation that elements of his book that “are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved.” Despite this, it seems to me that there have been some common themes among those who like my book. The following list, then represents (in unranked order) my summary of some of the top reasons why I think No Going Back is worth reading — based on reader responses to date, together with my own thinking. (Or — to put it another way — no one else seems to be beating down the door to list all the reasons why my novel is wonderful, so I need to do it myself.) Please feel free to read, respond, and (hopefully) add reasons of your own! (more…)
How We (Don’t) Talk About Homosexuality in the Mormon Church
Sunday, December 13th, 2009On Dec. 4, Rex Goode — a friend of mine from AML-List, who started the conversation years ago that ultimately led to No Going Back — posted a review/essay on his blog about my book and why he’d encouraged me to write it and then endorsed it after it came out. It’s a positive review, and some of the reasons he gives for endorsing the book have a lot in common with my reasons for writing it. And then, poking around his site, I found another essay titled Not Ashamed that I think may speak even more directly about ways that we Mormons need to change and how I hope my book might help that change.
Talking with Readers
Saturday, August 28th, 2010One of the best parts of having written No Going Back has been the chance to have conversations with readers of the book: Mormons, non-Mormons, ex-Mormons; literary readers, nonliterary readers, occasional readers; those with firsthand experience of homosexuality, those with secondhand knowledge, and those with little direct knowledge. Partly that’s because I think the themes of the book are important, and I like talking about them. And partly it’s because I find it fascinating — and instructive — to find out what my own writing looks like through other people’s eyes.
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Tags: homosexuality, Jonathan Langford, Mormon, No Going Back, North Star, reader comments, reader responses, readings
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