Defiance in professional garb

I can never get enough of books about FLDS, of which this is just the latest onslaught (and surely not the last).

Rebecca Musser grew up in Hildale, Utah in an upstanding FLDS household; her mother was a second wife to a prominent businessman who would entertain his aeronautics clients upstairs while his other family hid downstairs. Despite knowing she and her family were different from the rest of the world, "Sister Becky" was a happy young woman, musically gifted and curious, but her coming of age coincided with a bizarre chapter in FLDS history in which the wishes of late patriarch Rulon Jeffs became more and more erratic and paranoid. One such wish was granted when Becky was given in marriage to him at the age of 18, joining 18 other wives in a social arrangement only slightly less byzantine than the court of Marie Antoinette. Despite her best attempts to "keep sweet" and accept the wishes of the Prophet delivered through Rulon, Becky grew miserable with the restrictions continually placed on her -- unable to wear the color red, cut her hair or talk to men outside her family. She was constantly told to submit to her husband, and that soon enough she'd have a baby and wouldn't be able to rebel any more.

After Rulon's death, his son Warren began to make his own pronouncements, including hinting that he was prepared to take on his father's wives (seen as a privilege to them rather than to him). Despite having no formal education past high school and no money, Becky escaped the church with the help of a distant relative, later assisting others who wanted to leave. Eventually, she helped law enforcement prepare for the 2008 "Yearning for Zion" raid (in which over 400 women and children, virtual prisoners in a secluded FLDS compound, were removed peacefully while several of their elders faced arrest); Becky's role was primarily to act as a cultural translator between cops and church members. Her experiences during that raid led her to discover FLDS secrets even more destructive than the ones she had witnessed as a young wife in the church. (Some of these secrets may be revealed in the new TLC show "Breaking the Faith," which in keeping with my obsession I watched on Sunday night.)

Musser chooses to focus a lot of the second half of the book on the experience of testifying against former FLDS elders and leaders -- facing tough cross-examinations on the witness stand and even tougher criticism from the people she was trying to help. Her marriage fell apart because her husband didn't support her testifying (even though he was a fellow ex-FLDS member); despite a promise of anonymity, she found video of her testimony splashed all over Fox News. This wasn't the ending of the book I was expecting, but adds nuance to the reality that for victims of the Jeffs family and other church elders, arrests and convictions weren't the end of the story; they also had to find a way to live in a world that in no way reflected their upbringing. (Musser's younger sister Elissa has also written a book about her experiences with the FLDS, focusing more on the experience of being a teenage bride and the accompanying assault. I reviewed that one in this post.) The contrast is sharp between the FLDS language of subjugation, specifically through an aggressive domesticity (many children, close together, coexisting with other wives in the same house), and Musser's pursuit of justice.

In a way, leaving that piece of her behind in the FLDS community -- as well as her younger relatives who were there -- meant she couldn't disengage from the fight to give them their freedom. Like Elizabeth Smart, Musser comes to frame her experience as one of human slavery, linking it to thousands of women and children around the globe who live in similar situations but whose plights do not receive as much media attention. It's an incredible perspective from someone who was so sheltered as to believe her suffering was deserved.

Because she didn't keep sweet

After I finished all the books I brought to Rome with me, I picked up Elissa Wall's STOLEN INNOCENCE: MY STORY OF GROWING UP IN A POLYGAMOUS SECT, BECOMING A TEENAGE BRIDE, AND BREAKING FREE OF WARREN JEFFS. I polished it off pretty quickly -- I'm fascinated by these Mormon splinter groups (UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN being my first exposure) and it's not hard to see why this survivor's memoir became a best-seller.

I recently reviewed a book about growing up in a cult in 1970s Queens and one of my main criticisms of it was that I never fully understood the pull of its guru leader over the community he created. Naturally, it can be hard to convey to someone outside those religious bounds the appeal of such a tight-knit organization, especially if the author (as this one had) grew up there and essentially didn't know any different for most of her life. Wall grew up FLDS, but spends a lot of time unpacking how FLDS leader Warren Jeffs controlled his flock without even the threat of bodily harm -- turning family members against each other, positioning himself and the faith as the only door to salvation and colluding with local law enforcement to create a culture of paranoia. The self-proclaimed prophet, who survived an internal power struggle after the death of his father Rulon, is currently serving 10 years in prison thanks in part to Wall's testimony that he forced her to get into an abusive marriage to her first cousin at age 14.

Wall repeatedly uses the phrase "keeping sweet" as an expression of the culture of silence and endurance fostered by FLDS church elders, particularly among the women of the church. "Keeping sweet" means responding to adverse circumstances with a smile, remaining compliant and good-natured even when things don't turn out as you planned. It's an incredibly loaded phrase for Wall because, from the time she was younger and saw the church forcibly dismantle her family multiple times (sending away her father, and later another one of his wives), she was forced to learn how to "keep sweet" to get along at church and her church school. In the years between when she first thought about leaving the FLDS and made her break with the church, she effectively had to unlearn these techniques of submission to propel herself out into the wider world. Wall grew up within driving distance of Las Vegas, but in a society as distant to me as Khomeini's Iran or medieval Britain.