POST-MORMON STORIES
How the Past Set My Writing on Fire
After years of abortive drafts, finding compassion for my younger, misguided self was the key that finally unlocked my memoir.
I was arrested in 1987, when I was a nineteen-year-old Mormon missionary. For terrorism. In Canada, of all places. But even before that happened, I had become obsessed with the big idea to write about what it’s really like to be a missionary.
Tension between image and reality
We probably all picture Mormon missionaries as an army of interchangeable young men in white shirts and ties, trudging endlessly from one porch to the next with a message and a holy book. Even growing up Mormon, this was pretty much how I envisioned mission life. It wasn’t until I turned nineteen and was pressed into service myself that I discovered a more colorful reality.
The missionaries I met were anything but homogeneous, and frequently anything but holy. Some were diligent and some were slackers. Some were pious, sure, but more were profane. There was gossip and brownnosing and backstabbing galore. A few of my colleagues seemed to be set on breaking every rule in our little white handbook, not mention a Commandment or two.
