Orson Scott Card: Voice of a Sub-Minority

Orson Scott Card: Voice of a Sub-Minority

Or maybe multiple minorities.

Back in the spring of 1988 I was trying to put together a project that my English teacher had assigned us as juniors in high school.  I was in a Gifted and Talented, rather, Honors English class with many bright students at Bloomington High School South. Many of the students of this class were children of college professors, quite literate and knowledgeable in their own rights. I tried to belong. The multi-faceted task involved picking a subject that we felt strongly about and exploring it, writing and researching about it, creating and producing various papers and reports on it.

Arriving at this choice was clear for me, but then difficult.  The subject-matter that I chose was: What was it to being Mormon? A Latter-day Saint, who were we? What was I? What did it mean?

By my 17th year I knew that as a devout member of my church, I was a minority.  It was not about skin color or national heritage, it was about who I was based on the choices and beliefs that I held.

I was different, and I knew it.  I wanted to somehow present and define that. Express something personal and at the same time capture an identity that was existent in the world, a real thing.  Again, this was not based on my skin color or my parents nation of origin, being Mexican or Korean. But Mexicans and Koreans existed that were of my minority. I wanted to speak for all of us, back then some 7 or 8 million worldwide.

Folks on the Fringe, we Latter-day Saints. How to convey that message? How to understand how we were? What we were? If we were? 

Was this real, this identity that made me feel distanced from the rest? Or was it only me?

What was it that connected and marginalized me from everyone? Was this normal? Could you quantify or qualify it? Mormon-ness?

And... I struggled to do it. I ended up putting together some essays and I think a poem; I did not feel that it was satisfactory, but perhaps it earned a sufficient grade.

Little did I know that Orson Scott Card was writing up a storm of things that I could have used as sources, specifically about "our people". In the 1980s. 

And me, in the great American mid-west, a college townie in the mid-point between Kirtland and Nauvoo, the lands fled by the original Saints to the relative safety of the Rockies, the Great Salt Lake. 

What was this? Who was I in it? Did it really matter as much as I thought it did, among thousands of others that I had known till then?

Fast forward to 2018. I just read a book, a collection of short stories and novellas that Card published in the 1980s. Maybe it would have helped me back then. Maybe not.

I was preparing to go on a two year mission-- maybe his visions and  perspectives would have detracted from me and my path, I am not sure. I was not aware of his presence in the world of popular "sf", as they call it. I had read my share of science fiction, however. Arthur C. Clarke was my favorite.

I finally became more aware of this popular sci-fi author in the 1990s. I read Ender's Game in 1996-7. I very much liked it. I later read an article about a campus visit he made to MIT in Boston in 1997, while I was visiting the school. I did not have access to any internet web where things like his were easily or even pains-takenly found. Card's quotes had me wondering what type of LDS guy he was. He used earthy language a bit, not something I equated with being virtuous LDS.  I questioned his motives, his aims as real member or perhaps an associate of the faith. Ethnically Mormon? But not really its own ethnicity, but a sub-portion of one.

In the early 2000s I read the first of the Homecoming  books, loosely based on the Book of Mormon. I was not impressed.  My wife read a fantasy of Card's about that time or a little later, and enjoyed it. She also was able to read all three Bible books that Card wrote about the women of the Old Testament; I knew he was a great narrator and writer because my wife ate these up. Later, by 2009-10 I read some more of his Ender books, and very much enjoyed them, also while meeting people in Virginia who were old friends of his and called him Scotty, and knew him on a personal basis. One of my acquaintances even co-wrote a book with him. (They were supposed make it into a trilogy that never materialized). He sang at her funeral, which I missed but was interested to learn about.

And now, spring-summer break of 2018 I come across the 1980s "The Folk of the Fringe". Very heavy with Latter-day Saint material and subjects. I could have used it for my project as a high schooler, and scored more points, expanded the literary foundation for my people, our people, the Saints.

As of now he is 66. He is a voice of Mormons, a voice of science fiction.

He is one person to represent a minority that needs more voices.

Now we have the world wide web, a forum and tool that he and perhaps a few others envisioned in the sci-fi of the past.

We in some ways are more connected than ever.

We still need more, that is certain. He has created a presence in the market of ideas.

And there will be more.

Are we on the fringe? Are we peripheral? Are we marginalized, stigmatized?

More voices must weigh in.

I thank Brother Card for sharing. There will be more voices to this project.