Review
Title: Book of Mormon Sketches.
Author: Gabriel González Núñez
Publisher: Self-published
Genre: Religious Non-Fiction
Year Published: 2023
Number of Pages: xiii + 42. ISBN
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9798373558594
Price: 6.00
Reviewed by Sam Mitchell for the Association of Mormon Letters
Self-translated from its original Spanish version (Estampas del Libro de Mormón) by its author, Book of Mormon Sketches is a thoughtful and thought-provoking read. Writing twenty-nine poems, each with the “voice” and from the perspective of a Book of Mormon character, Gabriel González Núñez weaves something unique and enjoyable, leaving the reader wanting even more. Though brief, Book of Mormon Sketches offers unique perspectives on major and minor characters from the Book of Mormon. One should not feel bound to approach them canonically, but rather as stepping-stones to examine both teachings from the Book of Mormon as well as one’s own philosophy on life and the things that matter most.
Of note is the fact that “in 2022 the Spanish original of this book was included in the Association for Mormon Letter’s [sic] list of One Hundred Works of Significant Mormon Literature” (vii). A brief Introduction (pp. xi–xii) taken from AML’s presentation of “A Special Award in Fiction for the Spanish original” (xii) offers helpful context to Book of Mormon Sketches. The book itself was “inspired by the Uruguayan poet Juana de Ibarbourou’s Estampas de la Biblia (1934), a collection of forty brief dramatic monologues featuring characters from the Old Testament” (xi). “Those who read González Núñez’s slender volume should not be deceived,” however, the Introduction concludes, for “it packs a spiritual punch” (xii).
Book of Mormon Sketches is divided into four sections: “Part I: Generations” (pp. 1–11); “Intermission: The Last of the Jaredites” (pp. 13–15), featuring a poem in the voice of “Coriantumr, the last one” (15); “Part II: The Old Country” (pp. 17–21); and “Part III: The Great Nephite Nation” (pp. 23–40). Each of the twenty-nine entries follows a beautiful formula: beginning with the name of a Book of Mormon character, the poem then features a brief, standalone sentence followed by a longer paragraph (the last sentence of which often parallels the first, standalone one). Below this, the character’s name is stated again, but this time with a self-description, i.e., “I am Lehi, the visionary” (3). At the bottom of the page is the character’s name once more, written out in the Deseret alphabet (a very nice poetic flourish!).
As with any compilation, some poems will speak to readers more than others. For me, I enjoyed the artistic license González Núñez took with the “minor prophets” of the Book of Omni—“Omni, the defender” (7); “Ammaron, the lonely” (8); “Chemish, the potter” (9); “Abinadom, the warrior” (10); and “Amaleki, the scribe” (11). Such characters’ stories seem to invite us to “flesh them out,” and González Núñez does just that, here chronicling early Nephites struggling to cope with the trauma and war inflicted by their former brethren, the Lamanites. Omni’s entry is particularly haunting—after giving up hope that God “does not defend us” whenever the Lamanites “[attack] us at night, [lay] waste to our crops, [and burn] our villages,” Omni says: “So we meet them in our fields, we fight them in the forests, we persecute them across rivers, we catch up to them in their fields, and that they might know that we cannot be contended against, we steal their cattle and destroy their harvests” (7).
I adored the beauty and inherent tragedy of Abinadi’s poem, using a watery metaphor to foreshadow his fiery death (in the light of this poem, a baptism by fire, perhaps?):
“This rain that God pours is for me. … I know that when I go down, I will be subjected to scorn and derision, and even to the agonies of death. Yes, that city will witness that I am God’s broken servant. This will take place starting tomorrow, but tonight, in this place, God sends over me this light, arm rain. I let it wash over me and anoint me” (20).
Alma the Younger’s frantic, continuous sentence describing his post-repentance ministry brings the reader along with “the tireless [one]” as he “realized [that] I was wasting time that was not mine to waste … So I started running” (27).
González Núñez accentuates this Pauline-esque fervor not only in Alma the Younger, but also in “Amulek, the preacher” who was once commanded to be quiet at the deaths of his family but now “God commands me to never be quiet” in his preaching (28); as well as in “Zeezrom, the grateful,” whose conversion took him from “golden limnahs and silver ontis … [which] purchased judges and silence … [and] collars, robes, lands, honors, and the right to boast,” to missionary efforts that find him “weepingly [thanking God] for the hunger, the poverty, the heat, the cold, the weariness, the dispossession” (29).
Hints of old Lamanite gods stir under the surface in the poems of Abish and Lamoni, as Abish recalls that her father “told me that he had dreamt that the true god descended upon the house of the king in the form of a winged, feathered serpent” (31), and as Lamoni mourns: “I felt the blood on my hands grow heavy, sinking them into the earth and plunging me into the depths of the underworld. Being thus buried in my remorse, I heard the voice of a new god, a voice that was like the bleating of a lamb in the night” (32). Samuel becomes “the astronomer” as he uses Mayan calendaring to help him read what God “writes with stars”: “at the end of the next segment, heavenly wonders shall announce the coming of the feathered, winged serpent, and at the end of the next cycle, the moon shall make it rain blood on our enemies [the Nephites]” (37).
I was particularly chilled by Gadianton’s poem, who boasts:
“When I look a man in the eye when I hear his voice, I can discern that which is hidden in the unknown corners of his soul. The unutterable fears of his mind, the unspeakable imaginations of his heart, the unfathomable resentments of his soul. … I can then shape it with my lips by uttering the words he has always hoped to hear but never dared to say. … Only I can show them the coming day in which they need not fear their enemies, for they shall be dead; need not harbor resentments, for these shall be satisfied; and are free to let their imaginations roam unfettered, for these shall become reality. … I have shown them that my glory will feed them” (36).
These and other poems stirred something within me, leaving me wanting more. I sincerely hope that González Núñez will write—or perhaps is even already hard at work on—a Book of Mormon Sketches: Volume II. While this volume features the voice of Abish, I am interested to hear how González Núñez would portray Sariah, or Isabel the harlot, or the Lamanite women abducted by the Amulonites, or the daughters of the Zeniffites. How will he reckon with the stories of Laman and Lemuel, or Amalickiah, or Timothy, or those “peaceable followers of Christ” that Mormon addresses in the middle of the devasting final wars of the Nephites (Moroni 7:3)? Will there be Doctrine and Covenants and/or Book of Abraham Sketches? Whatever the answer, I look forward to more from Gabriel González Núñez.