Coming soon to your hands: Daughters in My Kingdom

The history of Relief Society that Sister Beck announced is complete and soon to be distributed to the members. I have heard a lot of speculation about what it would contain, but now we can read about it and even see Sis. Beck on a short video talking about it:

http://newsroom.lds.org/article/diversity-strength-mormon-women-new-relief-society-book

I found it interesting to think about the responsibility to make it both usable and applicable to women in countries around the world! The article explains the approach several times. For example:

“We needed something that would have global application and be applicable into the future, something that would appeal across cultures and languages, so it needed to be more message based rather than a typical chronological historian’s history,” President Beck said.

I was at first disappointed a little, in a "topical" history. But as I thought further, and read more of the article, I can see the reasoning. For example:

The 208-page book is organized by themes such as family, sisterhood and charity. Each chapter includes stories of Latter-day Saint women throughout history and around the world today. President Beck said the book is designed to be user-friendly for an audience that may not read much. It is also visually inviting, with every page featuring colorful photographs and beautiful artwork.

It's one thing to write a history for people in the United States. But we are a worldwide Relief Society! This poses several challenges. In addition to varying literary skills, that Sis. Beck mentioned, we also come from a variety of experience in the church (so the amount of basic church history facts varies), and a variety of cultural influences. What is important or interesting to one culture is different than another! What a challenge. I think there will be a lot of criticism of the book, which will be unfortunate. How do you write a history book with this sort of purpose?

Sis. Tanner was the one assigned to write the book. As she put it:

Tanner drew heavily on previous historical research and original documents for the book.

“This book is not necessarily meant to be a conclusive history; there are already historians who are doing that,” Tanner said. “The Relief Society presidency wanted a volume that would be accessible to the whole world, to sisters everywhere. I did have perspective on that, having seen sisters in so many circumstances and situations. The book needed to be something that every woman could read and understand and be invited into this work no matter where they are coming from.”

I think that is a good point. We do have historians doing the history in the way many were hoping this book would be done. This is a book with a different purpose, and we need to recognize that. This doesn't mean it isn't well done, important, or interesting. It was done with a great deal of thought and I think that needs to be kept in mind as we approach it.

To summarize, Sis. Beck said:

“We’ve had stories written for the historians. We’ve had stories written for the scholars. We’ve had stories written for the press. But we’ve never had the story written for the women themselves,” Beck said.

A book for women to sit down with 5 minutes or hours, and read about other women. A women-to-women book, I suppose you could say. Hm! Interesting.

So, we'll see! I'm excited to have a copy to read through! And it looks like it will be distributed free to all the members (so cool). At first I heard some assume this would be a new "manual" for RS, but it seems like it will be a helpful tool, full of stories, that can be used at any time in a talk, lesson, VT message, etc. A supplement, rather than a manual.

And, a nice supplement for our YW lessons, no?