Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman's Voice

The two one-star reviews by Julius and Natasha are ridiculous. I'm surprised they haven't been removed. I have not read this book but I did hear the author give a reading at the King's English. It was both intellectually interesting and emotionally satisfying. For what it's worth, I attended one of the author's singing classes at the U. She was technically quite proficient and very good at helping the more timid among us find our voices.

In Grace Notes we are invited to view the painful but ultimately healing journey that Hart has taken to find her voice, reclaim her body, and to live a more authentic spiritual life. She carefully traces the personal history of each of her spiritual and emotional maladies, sometimes tracking its roots back several generations. She finds healing by coming to terms with the constraining voices of authority, tradition, religion, and family. Grace Notes explores a variety of themes and weaves them together masterfully. For example, Hart struggles with accepting her body. She traces the source of her ambivalent and sometimes hateful attitude towards her body back to her grandmother, who hides her "disgusting" body under perfumes, and to her mother, whose "body was a diary of shame and fear" and who taught her daughter to hide her body under a thick mask of makeup. She uses her newfound voice to reclaim her body: "I could 'word' my way back to my body. I could try to see from inside my own skin, not as I'd viewed it from the outside since I was ten, as a bleeding burden or as church property or as my husband's private treasure...[then] I came to the poem I knew I had to write. Revisit the moment of your most passive silence, came a whisper inside of me. Give the girl you were a voice." Hart then launches into a harrowing account of her pre-marriage hymenotomy, the violent taking of her virginity by a patronizing physician. By giving voice to this girl, long silent and long silenced, Hart grants others a voice-she says the things that others may lack the courage to say. Grace Notes poses important questions to those who find security in a structured, hierarchical religion like Mormonism. Does the institution sometimes do more harm than good to the spiritual development of some of its members? Is it possible for someone like Heidi Hart-especially women-to find a place within the Church without sacrificing authenticity? Or is silence part of the price that one who disagrees (or doubts) must pay for membership? Is there a valued place for non-conformists in the Church? In spite of her struggles with Mormonism and the traditions of her family, I found Hart's critical treatment of family members and Mormonism even-handed and even humble. Quaker author Muriel Bishop wrote, "How can we in truth and lovingly help one another in this? Because we must remember that truth without love is violence. And love without truth is sentimentality. We do need both." Heidi Hart has followed this principle in her writing. While Hart is not afraid to be critical of authoritarian and constraining tendencies of the LDS Church, she also carefully acknowledges how she values her Mormon friends, neighbors and even (former) religious leaders. Her reflective and even introspective criticism is a refreshing departure from angrier and more violent attacks that seem to make up the bulk of other personal memoirs by those who have left the Church. There is so mu

One of the most interesting things about memoirs as splendid as this one is the way they act as a looking glass for their readers. In gazing into such a book, readers often see a reflection of themselves and their lives that awakens and stimulates (as _Grace Notes_ did for me) a deeper, compassionate, and enlightened "reflection" upon themselves and on the human condition. Other readers unfortunately (such as some reviewing Hart's book on this website) see a less pleasing reflection of themselves and then project their discomfort outward, blaming the book for causing them to see (or to feel or to encounter) what they may not wish to or be ready to. Indeed, in my opinion, what seems most apparent in violently negative reviews of brilliantly wrought memoirs like _Grace Notes_ is the rocky psychological terrain of the reader-reviewers themselves; an internal emotional landscape that I have to assume is characterized by a good deal of fear, insecurity, shame, and anger. The most we can do with reviews of this "projective" kind, really, is send their writers (usually anonymous, no surprise) thoughts of lovingkindness. In this luminous memoir we meet a woman on the verge of several passaggi--"passaggio," being a term drawn from the formal training of the voice, the place where a singer moves from one register to another--a pivotal place, a place of difficulty, challenge, and potential growth. Author Hart, in her early thirties, is at that "breaking point" where, just as a voice must learn make its passaggio, a person must learn to make his or her passage toward seemingly contradictory destinations: toward private personal truth and authenticity by making that truth manifest in the world; toward greater intimacy and connection by expanding one's sense of self and well-being to embrace others. Part feminist rite-of-passage narrative, part spiritual autobiography, _Grace Notes_ traces the path of its author, the descendant of a General Authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, toward a new religious identity as a Quaker, while negotiating and supporting her husband's decision to remain with their children in the Mormon church. The story follows Hart through an assay of her childhood and youth and through an exploration of her familial relationships--particularly her relationship with her mother, a woman who like her daughter, is a professional singer and performer; who like her daughter is a ironically "victim" of "silences," struggling to free herself from that sad inheritance passed between women across generations. It is a text richly and seamlessly interwoven with literary, classical music, and religious referents, the "mentors" that Hart discovers on her journey: Zuni mythology, Jewish traditions and Cabbalistic writings, and Benedictine monastic ritual; Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Brontë, Adrienne Rich, composer Ruth Crawford, Saint Hildegard of Bingen, and a mute,19th-century ancestor named Catherine whose diary Hart discovers

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. This book is a memoir from a woman who has thoroughly examined her life, her passions, and her spirituality. Reading her story has reawakened my desire to make music and to become more aware of how I'm leading my own life. Before I go further, I want to tell you that it is not a chronological memoir. I heard the author speak in a panel here in Salt Lake City, and she told us why she wrote non-chronologically: to show what memories were brought back to her at different times and how they helped her on her journey. Knowing that helped me forget about timelines and really enjoy experiencing the author's thought process as she describes her search for her voice. Although this book is in prose, the writing reads like poetry or music, both of which are passions of the author. She sets scenes, goes backward to memories and forward to the future, and speaks in metaphor to guide us through the process that took her on her journey from a Mormon wife and mother, questioning her religion, lost and alone, with no voice (literally and figuratively) to a vibrant, questioning, alive woman who sings with a genuine voice, repairs broken relationships, and reconciles her need to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with her family's need to remain in it. Along the way, Ms Hart provides us music nerds with all sorts of tantalizing tidbits of trivia. For extra credit, watch Cold Mountain, or at least listen to the soundtrack. This book touched me on many levels. It'll touch you, too.

I started reading this book thinking that I wouldn't enjoy it. (This book isn't what I normally read.) But I really got into this book! I wouldn't be able to put it down until I'd look at the clock and force myself to stop reading. The author really makes you feel and understand her emotions and experiences. I would recommend this book to anyone who has no real feel for their own voice. Or even for someone who's voice has no problems being heard.