Carolyn Howard-Johnson was featured in the Pasadena Weekly last week. Her topic: tolerance. Here's some excerpts from the article:
Perhaps known best for her novel “This is the Place,” about the struggles of Mormon women in 1950s Utah, Howard-Johnson is faced with a barrage of questions every time the Mormon community surfaces in the public eye. Given the current American fascination with this enigmatic and often misunderstood Christian sect, Howard-Johnson answers a lot of questions.
“There is great misunderstanding about Mormons,” Howard-Johnson said. “And my book is about mainstream Mormon culture. It’s meant to promote tolerance rather than to disparage.”
In addition to “This is the Place,” Howard-Johnson has written “Harkening,” a collection of short stories from out-takes from her novel, and two how-to manuals on promoting books: “The Frugal Book Promoter” and “The Frugal Editor,” from which she teaches a UCLA extension class.
Growing up in Salt Lake City, Howard-Johnson said she did not always see the potential for her own literary success.
“My Dad was Mormon and my Mom was Protestant,” she said. “I came up with the idea for a book about Mormons when I was 18, but didn’t write it until I was 60. Back then, I didn’t realize that women could have both a family and a career.”
“In Utah there’s a lot of prejudice coming from both the Mormons and non-Mormons. And because of my parents’ different backgrounds, I could see both perspectives,” she said.
Rather than denounce any specific group, Howard–Johnson has forged a less specific — and less bloody — battle. She has declared her war on intolerance.
“Americans are generally bad at accepting people for who they are,” she said. “They constantly want to change people. I think that intolerance is what’s causing most of the problems in the world.” Always one to see both sides of an issue, Howard-Johnson added that even though Mormons have faced multifarious injustices from uninformed media, they are not blameless.
“When I was a child, one of my best friends, who was Mormon, said to me, ‘I can’t wait until you die so that you’ll know that what Mormons believe is true,’” she recalled.
Howard-Johnson was diagnosed with cancer when she was 55. At that time, she had not published any books. Before her illness, the only writing she had done was for magazines and promotional work for her family’s small, independent retail chain. “I think that one of the reasons that I got sick was that I wasn’t following my own star,” she said.
Within two years, Howard-Johnson wrote both “This is the Place” and “Harkening.”
But Howard-Johnson faced great difficulty in getting her books published. So, naturally, once she had succeeded in selling them, Howard-Johnson’s next pursuit was to write a how-to book about publishing.
Through her writing, Howard-Johnson strives for unity by pointing out the similarities among people.
“Combating intolerance has always been my biggest motivating factor,” she said. “I really think that we’d all be so much happier if we just got over it.”
You can read the whole article, Life's little banquets by clicking on the link:
http://www.pasadenaweekly.comcms_story_detail_life_s_little_banquets_6098
