Worth Their Salt, Too: More Notable but Often Unnoted Women of Utah

by Colleen Whitley (Editor)

These women (community and government leaders, activists, artists, writers, scholars, politicians, and others) made important contributions to the state's history and culture.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

322 pages, Hardcover

First published May 2, 2000

Reviews

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is just amazing. It heralds a lot of amazing women from Utah that I had never heard of! I want to go back and study these women more in depth. Each one, were amazing! It is true that average people are the ones who do extraordinary things.
Highly recommend!

Note: I would love this book to be updated for 2021. Meaning, I found some details in my research, colored pictures etc of these women and their stories that would just be enhanced. It was fun to look through Newspaper archives to get even deeper into some of these stories.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some fascinating stories, some less so (it depends for what one is looking!). Useful mostly for reference but also, perhaps, to gain insight into the perspectives of the non-dominant cultures of Salt Lake City... a sorely needed view.

My favorites were commercial reformer Ester Eggertsen Peterson, writer Virginia Eggertsen Sorensen Waugh (There is also a THIRD "Eggertsen" in this compilation), great mind Lola Atiya, Iranian Princess Verla Gean Miller FarmanFarmaian, and activist Alberta Mae Hill Gooch Henry.

But I was especially touched by poetry and work by writer Emma Lou Thayne.



The Coming of Quiet
To a Home with Five Daughters Gone
1987

I could have declared, would likely believe
No day would come when the house all quiet
Would suit my heart, that I would not grieve
For the crowded rooms, the noisy diet.
Admittedly, eloquence sometimes came
One voice at a time, and silence crept
Light as a bird, the first to proclaim
The growing up and out as we slept.
But now this passage to silence and spaces
Throws up its hands, says, Make up your mind,
Choose: the clutch of voices, fingers, and faces?
Or unoccupied order? Strangely I find
This moment, that, that moment, this,
Each transient and lingering as a kiss.


First Loss

My grandma shared her bed with me,
Till she died when I was twelve.
We slept with breaths that matched.
I went to sleep every night restraining
Deliberately one extra breath in five
To let her slower time teach mine to wait...

She died there when I was twelve.
I was sleeping, alien, down the hall
In a harder bed, isolated from the delicate
Destruction that took its year to take her.
That night my mother barely touched my hair
And in stiff, safe mechanics twirled the customary
Corners of my pillow one by one. "Grandma's gone,"
She said. Crepuscular against the only light
Alive behind her in the hall, she somehow left.
My covers fell like lonely lead on only me
I lay as if in children's banks of white where
After a new snow we plopped to stretch and carve

Our shapes like paper dolls along a fold.
Now, lying on my back, I ran my longest arms
From hips to head, slow arcs on icy sheets,
And whispered childhood's chant to the breathless room:
"Angel, Angel, snowy Angel,
Spread your wings and fly."

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good collections of biographies about Utah women. As is usually the case with a compilation like this, the quality is uneven between the authors, but still good as a whole. I liked that it spanned Mormon and non-Mormon women, and a broad range of experiences. Algie Ballif was my favorite sketch, and Sarah Sutton Cook was also fantastically researched.

*I forgot to review this when I read it last year, so this review is a little less fresh than what I usually write.