Textual Poaching: "A Proclamation"

I wanted to explore my identity as both a woman and a member of the Church. Initially I was planning to remake a “Mormonad” that commented on modesty, but the Mormonads I was interested in remixing were all made in 2000 or 2001, which is after I was born—earlier ones didn’t give me as much to comment on. (Fascinating!) This led me to think about how the representation of women in the church has changed over time, and ultimately led me to the Family Proclamation, introduced in 1995. I was raised learning about the role of women within the context of this document, and yet it is interesting to think about how more recent talks (like several of President Nelson’s) have shifted the way I think about women, our power, our desires, our freedom, and our worth. Writing this blackout poem I tried to use this document that might seem constricting in its definition of women and femaleness to instead represent some broader truths about femaleness and how God views us. It feels to me like this poem is distilling the text into a simple call for everyone to give more power and voice to women. 

In the Barney reading, I was impressed by the teacher’s knowledge of existing resources—she knew so many different video game examples that she could share with her students to help them jump into the ongoing conversations about their identities! As I was working on this project, I felt grateful that I, too, had a pretty extensive knowledge of much of the discourse in the Church about the role of women. In order to help students jump into the conversation, I need to already at least be aware of the conversation.