Book Review: Sister Saints

I enjoyed this book immensely and learned a great deal from it. Sister Saints is very comprehensive, well-researched, and takes you through the different time periods of the church’s history. It does a great job of explaining the context behind the events, which was helpful for me, since I wasn’t alive during those times.

I was surprised to read that, during Amy Lyman’s leadership, women could receive a special church calling as a social worker. They received professional training and got paid. This is the only instance I’ve ever heard of a woman having a paid (and professional) calling in the church. I also enjoyed the story of the Hawaiian sisters who, when told that their hard-earned money (which had belonged to the Relief Society) would now be under the Bishop’s stewardship, decided to spend their money at a nice restaurant. The book talks about all kinds of issues that relate to LDS women, such as Heavenly Mother, voting rights, contraceptives, and the Equal Rights Amendment.

Too often we hear only about men in the Church. I remember when the Sunday lessons were the Teachings of the Prophets. Whenever I studied Church History or the Doctrine & Covenants, it was all about men. It made it seem like only men were the active participants in establishing the church. The only women who are really talked about are Emma Smith, Lucy Mack Smith, and Eliza R. Snow. Because of this, I hunger to hear women’s voices in church history, and this book definitely fulfills this need. It shows that women have been active participants in the church all along. The book points out that polygamy wouldn’t have survived as long as it did if the women hadn’t been on board with it. I hadn’t seen it from that angle before. I was surprised to read that a good thing that came out of polygamy was women receiving the right to vote. I hadn’t made that connection before: that polygamy helped women get the right to vote in Utah. Sister Saints is filled with many interesting connections and perspectives.

One of my favorite things in this book is the variety of voices and opinions given by women. The book is filled with many women’s names (most of whom I’d never heard of before) and there were also many names I recognized, especially the LDS feminists of today. The book mentions both famous women from church history and lesser known women, and specifically mentioned if it was referring to black women or white women. All too often, when church history mentions women, it really only means white women. So I appreciated that this book made the correct distinctions and included black women.

Another thing I appreciate in this book is the different perspectives. When it talks about the Relief Society saving up money for their own Relief Society building, it explains both the women’s perspectives and the men’s perspectives of the situation. Basically, the Church didn’t sell the land to the Relief Society anymore, like they had promised, but instead built a building for the Presiding Bishopric and gave a few rooms to the Relief Society leadership. Bathsheba Smith’s perspective was that the women had sacrificed so much to save money to buy the land for the Relief Society building, so she was sorrowful. The men, on the other hand, viewed it differently. They felt that the women had wasted their time and hadn’t raised enough money. While reading this book, I sometimes felt like crying because events like this seem so unfair. But don’t let this stop you from reading the book. It’s very uplifting as well because it shows how women influenced the church despite the limits the church placed on them.

There were many things I had never heard of before, such as Fascinating Womanhood (a crazy book which told women to act like children) or Mark Hoffman (who sold fake historical documents to the Church). I felt sad when I read about how the women’s accomplishments were ignored by men as the church leadership directed more and more responsibilities to be taken away from the Relief Society and given to the men instead.

The book mentions the conflicting messages the Church gave about women. I felt sad and angry at many of the quotes by men who said negative things about women. It shocked me that some church leaders said those things, such as Brigham Young saying that women shouldn’t meet together because they’d cause trouble. The book mentions some quotes by him ranging from his attempts to limit women and then later realizing that he needed the women’s support. After that, his quotes were very favorable towards women.

These are just a few of the many stories found in this book. If you enjoy learning about LDS history, especially LDS women’s history, this book is definitely for you.

[amazonjs asin=”0190221313″ locale=”US” title=”Sister Saints: Mormon Women since the End of Polygamy”]