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Mormon Healer and Folk Poet: Mary Susannah Fowler's Life of "Unselfish Usefulness." By Margaret K. Brady. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 222. Index, bibliography, photos. $44.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. Margaret K. Brady's book explores not only the experience of a turn-of-the-century woman but also how this woman was and continues to be discursively constructed. A Mormon resident of the southern Utah towns of Orderville and Huntington, Mary Susannah Fowler has been characterized according to various life roles: folk healer, mother, believing Mormon, writer and poet, community leader, member of a polygamous household, and so on. Part of Brady's project is to examine how Fowler's contemporaries and descendants produce these identity constructions and how the constructions overlap. In the process of discovering these "accumulating texts" (3) of identity, Brady determines Fowler's life story to be one of interconnectedness with her community. Brady's focus on interrelationship also meshes with her own methodology, which is interdisciplinary and reflexive. Parts of the book present Mormon social history, others focus on literary criticism of "folk poetry," while yet others set forth theoretical arguments about the social position of the self and reflexive epistemology. Brady is especially influenced by Elaine Lawless's concept of "reciprocal ethnography" and uses the idea to highlight the negotiated nature of depictions of Fowler and the integral role readers play in creating textual meaning. With another reflexive turn, Brady acknowledges that her being a scholar, a non-Mormon, and a woman influences her own representation of Fowler and that other readers will construct different portraits that add to the "accumulating texts." In these respects, community and discourse is not just the subject of the book but also a key to reading it. Divided into six chapters, the book examines multiple aspects of Mary Susannah Fowler's identity while placing those constructions within a community context (the small and largely Mormon towns of Orderville and Huntington). The first and the last chapters tackle general aspects of Fowler's life. The first chapter uses a variety of sources to patch together a basic biography of Fowler, a sketch on which readers and author can build. Brady is quick to point out that the biography is situated in discourse; for example, she retells stories about Fowler that she (Brady) first used as didactic narratives for her own daughter. Consequently, the book also represents Brady's personal process of coming to know Fowler. The sixth chapter, subtitled "A Matrix of Discourses," reiterates the connection between biography and discourse: Brady demonstrates how multiple perspectives of Fowler interact and overlap. In this chapter, she also sets forth much of the theory behind her project. Acknowledging that books can be nonlinear, Brady suggests that some may want to begin with this final chapter to focus on the theoretical basis of identity construction before reading the rest of the book. The middle chapters zero in on Fowler's communities and her (inter)connection with them. Chapter Two examines Fowler as a Mormon participant in both the communal economic practices in Orderville and the social relationships of both towns. Chapter Three constructs Fowler as a sought-after folk healer, a role that was central to Fowler's emotional and social connection to her neighbors. Chapter Four introduces another important construction of Fowler--as a writer and poet--by examining the community writing culture, Fowler's role in a literary club, and her public prose writing. Finally, Chapter Five takes up Fowler's poetry as a manifestation of "folk poetry": expression that reflects and negotiates a community's values and discourse. Taken together, the chapters of Mormon Healer and Folk Poet emphasize how representations of Fowler are created by Fowler herself, by her children, by the author, and ultimately by the reader. In the process, the book moves beyond life history to focus on the ways communities establish and negotiate meaning. David Allred |
