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James Goldberg is a self-described Sikh-Jewish-Mormon and someone who has spent the past 15 years writing about the Latter-day Saint religion and Mormon culture.
In that time, he has published eight books, including four books of poetry and a literary novelization of Jesus’ ministry. He has also worked with the history department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on two volumes of “Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days” and “Revelations in Context: The Stories Behind the Sections of the Doctrine and Covenants.”
In July, he and co-author Janci Patterson published the young adult novel “Bollywood Lovers’ Club” about a Sikh girl and a Latter-day Saint boy navigating dating, college applications and family expectations.
We sat down with Goldberg to learn more about the story, as well as his ongoing efforts to foster a “Mormon renaissance” in writing and art.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
What is the origin story behind ‘Bollywood Lovers’ Club’?
It can be complicated for people to talk about religion in literature. Audiences don’t always know what to do when they encounter it. So I thought if we take two different communities that people don’t know well and put them side by side, maybe readers would be able to see the different ways people relate to religious identity, tradition and community.
In this book, the characters — Amrita, who is Sikh, and Dave, who is Mormon and part-Indian — are navigating cultural issues around dating and education. How much are you writing from your own experience?
A lot of immigrant stories we tell in the United States are about all of these expectations that immigrant parents can have for their children, and then those children choosing a separate path.
In my life, it’s been a little more complicated. On the one hand, I’ve definitely had to figure out how to live with expectations. But on the other hand, there’s a lot that I don’t like about the way the world works now that makes me want to hold on to some of the beliefs and practices my family had in previous generations — culturally, spiritually and in terms of worldview. So with Amrita, we were really interested in telling a kind of different immigrant story about how to claim your own culture instead of just declaring independence from your parents.
Why tell this story as a young adult novel?
Young adult novels are really good at asking questions about who we are and who we choose to be. Those questions of identity and how you relate to community, they’re part of us all through our lives, but for a lot of people, it’s those young adult years when you’re starting to really make those decisions. And so that felt like the right genre to explore those themes.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Latter-day Saint young adult author James Goldberg, at his home in American Fork, on Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021.
How unusual is it to have a young adult novel that’s so explicitly about and driven by the faith of the characters?
I feel like it’s fairly unusual today because school libraries are such a big part of the young adult market and publishers aren’t always sure how to market stories where religion figures prominently to school libraries.
But I also feel like you’re never going to tell the stories you want to if you wait for them to be marketable. If you’re going to break through and tell different types of stories, you’ve got to just tell them and then see how they find their own audience.
You have described yourself specifically as a Mormon writer. What does that mean?
It means that tradition, heritage and language are really important parts of how I make my way through the world — and I’m really committed to exploring them through literature.
We live in a world where we talk a lot about diversity, but it’s hard to actually invest in diversity and different experiences. As a writer, it’s important to me that most of my energy goes into telling stories in my native language and about the kind of questions that people in my faith care about. I think the world will be richer if people from different backgrounds can ask their own questions and use their own language.
Honestly, for Latter-day Saints, the first step to having our perspective taken seriously by other people is to take it seriously ourselves. And we don’t always. A lot of times, Latter-day Saints are very nervous about exploring our own culture and heritage in literature and art. We’re getting better, but we’ve struggled with that.
Struggled how? What do you think is missing?
A lot of readers I have talked to, when they find out I write Mormon literature, there’s kind of this eye roll. Like, oh, that’s probably really bad. It’s probably really simplistic and sappy. We have these stereotypes about ourselves that we just totally buy into.
So we’ve got great writers but a lot of times they’re telling other stories that are for a more general audience. There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t think every Mormon should be writing Mormons into their stories. But I think it’s really sad that, as writers, we have this association where we’ve come to feel like we probably don’t have a lot to say or we’re not going to say it very well. And I think that’s kept a lot of writers from trying.
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Minority groups anywhere tend to struggle with that. There’s always some pressure from the outside not to speak your language and to be widely accessible. Having looked at lots of different minority groups and their struggle to claim their own heritage and language, I have felt like that’s a thing we need to do. And we just haven’t, maybe because many Latter-day Saints can pass as part of the white Protestant cultural majority in the United States.
But we’re not Protestants. We have this very different culture. But we’ve really compartmentalized it. There are times where we do our own Mormon things and then there are times we fit in. I think that has led us to neglect this heritage that we have.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Latter-day Saint young adult author James Goldberg, at his home in American Fork, on Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021.
What are the questions and the language unique to the Mormon faith?
There’s not one answer, but one example that comes up in “Bollywood Lovers’ Club” a lot, and that is essential, is how to balance existing as an individual with existing in community. Mormons lean hard toward community. Western cultures tend to lean hard toward the individual.
So, as Mormons, we have questions we’re asking about how to form a committed community in a 21st century that’s Western dominated. And I think for Latter-day Saints, there’s always the question of how to integrate new people into the community.
There are other questions around what’s important in life and how to make meaning. It’s interesting to me how much our work life and consumption tastes have come to define us. We are what we do and consume. Religion can offer a counterpoint to that.
You have written in the past about your hope of living through and being part of a Mormon renaissance. Are we there? Did we make it?
We are living in a really interesting moment where there’s a lot going on. I’ve been able to collaborate with musicians, visual artists and scholars, and that’s been super exciting. I also think we’re starting to get more of the organizational structure in place to bring people together. I’ve been involved with the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. The work they’re doing is really exciting. We’re creating more venues where you can bring your whole self to your art.
One important part of that is doing more to foster literature in other languages, and I think we’re in the very early stages of that. For the past 10 years, my wife, Nicole Wilkes Goldberg, and I have run a contest, the Mormon Lit Blitz, where we’ve invited people to write very short works. We’ve published submissions that were in Spanish, Portuguese, Tagalog and Estonian — those are the languages I can think of off the top of my head. And through a project called the Mormon Lit Lab, we’re mentoring eight writers on book-length stories, including a magical realist novel in Spanish by Gabriel González Núñez and an essay and short story series from César Augusto Medina Fortes in Portuguese.
So, yeah, I do think we’re renaissance-ing.
What are some of the other obstacles hindering artistic freedom and expression within the faith? What’s keeping Mormon artists from creating more, and there being more Mormon artists?
Resources and institutions are pretty important. Before Richard Bushman started his work with the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, he worked in Mormon history, which was not a well-established field when he started out. But there’s been a lot of investment into it, and now we have conferences and universities and the church all coming together to create new opportunities for historians to develop and publish.
Writers and artists who are interested in dealing with Mormon or Latter-day Saint themes have been in the wilderness for a long time. We haven’t had those conferences or the same university support. Brigham Young University’s art museum has featured some work from artists dealing with themes from the Book of Mormon and uniquely Latter-day Saint perspectives on other scripture. And the BYU English department does have one class on Latter-day Saint literature, but it’s usually taught by someone who’s part time.
So in literature, we’ve had to find other spaces. The contest my wife and I run has helped to create space for a lot of writers to experiment with combining those two interests — one in storytelling, one in their native religious language. By Common Consent Press would be another.
(Photo courtesy of Richard Bushman) Latter-day Saint scholar Richard Bushman.
I noticed you use the terms “Latter-day Saint” and “Mormon.” What is the distinction between the two in your mind?
I’m not consistent, but I try to use “Latter-day Saint” when I talk about people as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I try to use “Mormon” when I’m talking about the culture, history and ideas. In my mind, many people who no longer identify with the church are still part of the Mormon story.
A lot of religious narratives are about leaving faith. Do you ever worry that the talent within Mormonism is being hollowed out?
It’s an easier story to tell to the outside world, that of “I am one of you now.” We see a bias for that in immigrant stories, too. A lot of the 19th-century Mormon narratives that got published are stories of people leaving the church, because that was scandalous and interesting and what outside audiences demand. Obviously the religion didn’t hollow out in the 19th century even though there was a steady stream of people who were leaving the church.
There are genuine challenges to remaining engaged with a tradition that’s much more communal and where you have to deal with authority — especially if, like many writers, you are someone interested in raising questions and examining assumptions. But I think it’s a genuine loss when those people walk away because you’re no longer telling the kinds of stories that you can tell from this position of engagement. Society works better as a conversation, and we need to hold on to the unique things we can say and contribute to that conversation as Mormons.
Who are the Mormon artists and writers you’re currently excited about?
Back when I was doing theater, I got to be friends with Melissa Leilani Larson. I think she’s a fascinating playwright. In poetry, Darlene Young has a collection, “Homespun and Angel Feathers,” that I think is so, so great. Steven Peck’s “The Tragedy of King Leere: The Goatherd of the La Sals” is a really important book. Matt Page’s graphic novels are a really interesting mix of everyday devotional sincerity with wild, creative imagery. And Citlalli H. Xochitiotzin’s essay “TIME a particle” is one of my favorite treatments of Atonement in art, period.
(Photo courtesy of Melissa Leilani Larson) Latter-day Saint writer Melissa Leilani Larson.
How can people support Mormon art and literature?
Read it and buy it. Those are not small things. And then support creators in other ways, whether that’s contributing to an institution like the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, subscribing to a podcast, or contributing directly to someone through Patreon or Kickstarter.
The second step is to talk about it and start conversations about it. We carve out room for a culture of our own by having conversations of our own, and anybody in the digital age can play a really important role in that.
