Abstract
Girl Behind Glass is a collection of essays that explore girlhood and coming-of-age in the context of Mormonism and the twenty-first century. Across the collection, urgent questions of identity and purpose arise amidst a slow-burning crisis of faith. In forms of personal narrative, flash, art criticism, cultural analysis, historiography, and genealogy, these essays explore topics from the Mountain Meadows Massacre to the Hallmark Channel to teen angst to puppy parenting to the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping to Joseph Cornell’s shadow boxes. The work traces the writer’s emotional and intellectual engagement with these phenomena as she navigates gender roles, loneliness, and what it means to be “good” as a former Bishop’s daughter. Ultimately, these essays find meaning through humor, and a measure of peace through the discovery that despite what The Breakfast Club says, when you grow up, your heart does not die.