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“Great Cause to Mourn”

As is often noted, The Book of Mormon attaches normative value to whiteness and generally ignores women’s spirituality. This essay insists, however, that the book’s presentation of gender and race should be read with an eye to characters who, from within the volume’s own narrative, identify and critique the racial and sexual presuppositions of the narrative. Focused on the racialized prophet Samuel and the countercultural prophet Jacob, the authors thus read The Book of Mormon as aware of and critical toward its own apparent racial and sexual problems. They argue that The Book of Mormon would in this way likely have struck its earliest readers as in step with the then-nascent genre of domestic fiction, represented in the 1820s by Lydia Maria Child (Hobomok) and Catharine Maria Sedgwick (Hope Leslie). Yet, unlike such novels, The Book of Mormon does its work through inventive (but subtle) reimaginings of key biblical texts.