Review: Max Perry Mueller. Race and the Making of the Mormon People. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Authors

Brandi Denison

Keywords

Max Perry Mueller, race, Mormonism, nineteenth century, nonwhite voices

Abstract

Max Perry Mueller’s Race and the Making of the Mormon People argues that “for early Mormons, the construction and deconstruction of what it meant to be, to act, and to look black, white, and red were as much literary projects and they were literal ones” (p. 8). Mueller positions his book as both a case study of how nineteenth-century Americans wrote about and constructed race through text as well as a “particular case unto itself” (p. 9). Through the book, Mueller aimed to capture the voices of nonwhite Mormons in the nineteenth century and how they “resisted, acquiesced, and sometimes embraced the racialized theologies of Mormonism to argue for their inclusion within the sacred Mormon community and the sacred Mormon historical narrative” (p. 11). Mueller correctly argues that the work of the nonwhite Mormons is central to Mormon racial history, in that they helped to shape church policies and theologies related to race.

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Denison, Brandi (2019) "Review: Max Perry Mueller. Race and the Making of the Mormon People. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.," Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 6: No. 1, Article 18.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol6/iss1/18