Item Detail
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18795
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2
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0
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English
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"You Have No Right to Do Such a Thing" : An Insider Study of Entitlement of Spirit Child Narratives in Mormon Communities
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Columbia, Missouri
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University of Missouri
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146
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Master's thesis
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I conducted a study of spirit child narratives told by Mormon women after reading an article about these narratives by Margaret K. Brady, who is not Mormon. She concluded in her article that spirit child narratives are frequently told in public church meetings by Mormon women. Spirit child narratives are narratives about a parent's, usually a mother's, unborn child appearing to her in a dream or vision. I have been a Mormon all my life and had never heard any spirit child narratives. In my study, I wanted to determine why my experience was so different from Brady's conclusions. I collected narratives orally and by email. I also looked at transcriptions of spirit child narratives in BYU and Utah State's folklore archives. I found written versions in The Ensign , which is the Mormon church's official magazine. I collected 75 narratives. I discovered that spirit child narratives were rarely told publicly and were also rarely told privately. Most of my collectors were hesitant to share narratives with me, and some refused to share narratives. I used Amy Sherman's work on storytelling rights to explain this phenomenon. Only close family members are entitled to hear spirit child narratives, and scholars are one of the groups that Mormons want to most exclude from listening to these narratives. I therefore was only able to collect from close family and friends and in the collecting process had to downplay my role as a scholar. My results were different from Brady's because she collected only in rural Mormon communities in Utah while I collected from urban Mormons in Utah and Texas. This difference demonstrates the dangers of generalizing results found in one Mormon community to all Mormons. [Author's abstract]