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Facing East
Ruth and Alex McCormick are an upstanding Mormon couple reeling from the suicide of their gay son. In Facing East, they are stuck between the comfort of their faith and the unfamiliarity of their new reality when they meet their son’s partner, Marcus, for the first time.
FACING EAST comes over 20 years after Pearson’s seminal book Goodbye, I Love You, the story of her life with her gay husband Gerald, their 12-year Mormon temple marriage, four children, divorce, ongoing friendship, and his death from AIDS in her home, where she cared for him.
Mormonism is the perfect place to examine the issues surrounding religion and homosexuality. Pearson’s new book, NO MORE CIRCLING THE WAGONS AROUND OUR GAY LOVED ONES, is also now available on Kindle. A collection of goodbyes said to gay and lesbian people in the name of religion, the book also includes hopeful stories of families refusing to let anything come between them and their family members.
FACING EAST comes over 20 years after Pearson’s seminal book Goodbye, I Love You, the story of her life with her gay husband Gerald, their 12-year Mormon temple marriage, four children, divorce, ongoing friendship, and his death from AIDS in her home, where she cared for him.
Mormonism is the perfect place to examine the issues surrounding religion and homosexuality. Pearson’s new book, NO MORE CIRCLING THE WAGONS AROUND OUR GAY LOVED ONES, is also now available on Kindle. A collection of goodbyes said to gay and lesbian people in the name of religion, the book also includes hopeful stories of families refusing to let anything come between them and their family members.
Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
32 people want to read
About the author
Carol Lynn Pearson
93 books125 followersFrom http://www.clpearson.com/about_me.htm
In fourth grade, in Gusher, Utah, I won four dollars in a school district essay contest on “Why We Should Eat a Better Breakfast.” And yes, this morning I had a bowl of my own excellent granola, followed by a hike in the hills near my home in Walnut Creek, California.
In high school I began writing in earnest. I have now in my files a folder marked “Poetry, Very Bad,” and another, “Poetry, Not Quite So Bad.” Writing served a good purpose for that very dramatic, insecure adolescent. Also at that time I began to keep a diary, which I still maintain and which has been indescribably useful to me both as a writer and as a pilgrim on the earth.
After graduating from Brigham Young University with an MA in theatre, teaching for a year in Utah at Snow College, and traveling for a year, I taught part-time at BYU in the English department and was then hired by the motion picture studio on campus to write educational and religious screenplays.
While performing at the university as Mrs. Antrobus in Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” I met and fell in love with Gerald Pearson, a shining, blond, enthusiastic young man, who fell in love with me and my poems.
“We’ve got to get them published,” he said on our honeymoon, and soon dragged me up to the big city, Salt Lake City, to see who would be first in line to publish them. “Poetry doesn’t sell,” insisted everyone we spoke to, and I, somewhat relieved, put publishing on the list of things to do posthumously.
But not Gerald. “Then I’ll publish them,” he said. Borrowing two thousand dollars, he created a company called “Trilogy Arts” and published two thousand copies of a book called Beginnings, a slim, hard-back volume with a white cover that featured a stunning illustration, “God in Embryo,” by our good friend Trevor Southey, now an internationally known artist. On the day in autumn of 1967 that Gerald delivered the books by truck to our little apartment in Provo, I was terrified. I really had wanted to do this posthumously.
Beginnings
Today
You came running
With a small specked egg
Warm in your hand.
You could barely understand,
I know,
As I told you of Beginnings–
Of egg and bird.
Told, too,
That years ago you began,
Smaller than sight.
And then,
As egg yearns for sky
And seed stretches to tree,
You became–
Like me.
Oh,
But there’s so much more.
You and I, child,
Have just begun.
Think:
Worlds from now
What might we be?–
We, who are seed
Of Deity.
We toted a package of books up to the BYU bookstore, and asked to see the book buyer. “Well,” she said, “nobody ever buys poetry, but since you’re a local person, let me take four on consignment.” As they came in packages of twenty, we persuaded her to take twenty--on consignment. Next day she called and asked, “Those books you brought up here. Do you have any more of them?”
I had anticipated that the two thousand books, now stacked in our little closet and under our bed and in my Daddy’s garage, would last us years and years as wedding presents. But immediately we ordered a second printing. Beginnings sold over 150,000 copies before we gave it to Doubleday and then to Bookcraft.
Beginnings was followed by other volumes of poetry: The Search, The Growing Season, A Widening View, I Can’t Stop Smiling, and Women I Have Known and Been. Most of the poems from the earlier books now appear in a compilation, Beginnings and Beyond. The poems have been widely reprinted in such places as Ann Landers’ column, the second volume of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and college textbooks such as Houghton Mifflin’s Structure and Meaning: an Introduction to Literature. That first little volume of verse, and my husband’s determination, laid the foundation for my entire career.
Another characteristic of my husband was to have a profound effect on both
In fourth grade, in Gusher, Utah, I won four dollars in a school district essay contest on “Why We Should Eat a Better Breakfast.” And yes, this morning I had a bowl of my own excellent granola, followed by a hike in the hills near my home in Walnut Creek, California.
In high school I began writing in earnest. I have now in my files a folder marked “Poetry, Very Bad,” and another, “Poetry, Not Quite So Bad.” Writing served a good purpose for that very dramatic, insecure adolescent. Also at that time I began to keep a diary, which I still maintain and which has been indescribably useful to me both as a writer and as a pilgrim on the earth.
After graduating from Brigham Young University with an MA in theatre, teaching for a year in Utah at Snow College, and traveling for a year, I taught part-time at BYU in the English department and was then hired by the motion picture studio on campus to write educational and religious screenplays.
While performing at the university as Mrs. Antrobus in Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” I met and fell in love with Gerald Pearson, a shining, blond, enthusiastic young man, who fell in love with me and my poems.
“We’ve got to get them published,” he said on our honeymoon, and soon dragged me up to the big city, Salt Lake City, to see who would be first in line to publish them. “Poetry doesn’t sell,” insisted everyone we spoke to, and I, somewhat relieved, put publishing on the list of things to do posthumously.
But not Gerald. “Then I’ll publish them,” he said. Borrowing two thousand dollars, he created a company called “Trilogy Arts” and published two thousand copies of a book called Beginnings, a slim, hard-back volume with a white cover that featured a stunning illustration, “God in Embryo,” by our good friend Trevor Southey, now an internationally known artist. On the day in autumn of 1967 that Gerald delivered the books by truck to our little apartment in Provo, I was terrified. I really had wanted to do this posthumously.
Beginnings
Today
You came running
With a small specked egg
Warm in your hand.
You could barely understand,
I know,
As I told you of Beginnings–
Of egg and bird.
Told, too,
That years ago you began,
Smaller than sight.
And then,
As egg yearns for sky
And seed stretches to tree,
You became–
Like me.
Oh,
But there’s so much more.
You and I, child,
Have just begun.
Think:
Worlds from now
What might we be?–
We, who are seed
Of Deity.
We toted a package of books up to the BYU bookstore, and asked to see the book buyer. “Well,” she said, “nobody ever buys poetry, but since you’re a local person, let me take four on consignment.” As they came in packages of twenty, we persuaded her to take twenty--on consignment. Next day she called and asked, “Those books you brought up here. Do you have any more of them?”
I had anticipated that the two thousand books, now stacked in our little closet and under our bed and in my Daddy’s garage, would last us years and years as wedding presents. But immediately we ordered a second printing. Beginnings sold over 150,000 copies before we gave it to Doubleday and then to Bookcraft.
Beginnings was followed by other volumes of poetry: The Search, The Growing Season, A Widening View, I Can’t Stop Smiling, and Women I Have Known and Been. Most of the poems from the earlier books now appear in a compilation, Beginnings and Beyond. The poems have been widely reprinted in such places as Ann Landers’ column, the second volume of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and college textbooks such as Houghton Mifflin’s Structure and Meaning: an Introduction to Literature. That first little volume of verse, and my husband’s determination, laid the foundation for my entire career.
Another characteristic of my husband was to have a profound effect on both
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 3, 2022
Some theater is good drama. Some drama is important theater. Facing East by Carol Lynn Pearson is both.
It takes place at a cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah. Alex and Ruth McCormick have just buried their son, Andrew, 24, who killed himself because he could not find a way to live with himself. Andrew was gay, and despite a loving relationship with a man named Marcus that had gone on for the past year, he was stuck in a cycle of self-hatred and deeply entrenched guilt. Andrew was also a Mormon, and the Mormon Church says homosexual behavior is a sin.
The play, though, is much more about Alex and Ruth than it is about Andrew. Alex is a successful radio talk show host--his program, "One-Minute Dad," has a couple million loyal listeners in the American Southwest, and it's about to make a bid for national syndication. Ruth is, as her Church tells her to be, a steadfast homemaker, wife, and mother. They have two other children. They loved Andrew, encouraged his musical gift (he played cello in a symphony orchestra), but couldn't accept his homosexuality:
The older I get, the more I realize how much I don't know. But so many people--Ruth is absolutely one of them--are unwavering in their faith. For me, the most important lesson of Facing East is that understanding people like Ruth, who believe devoutly and unquestioningly what they've been taught by parents, teachers, and pastors, may be difficult, but it's essential. Others may be moved by the play's strong stand for gay pride: "God loves me and I am gay," proclaims Marcus, Andrew's partner and lover, at one point. Whatever you take from Facing East will be your truth. What's important is to hear this play, and take its messages to heart.
Pearson, a Mormon whose husband eventually came out to her as a gay man (and eventually died from AIDS), knows her characters inside and out, and depicts them here vividly and compassionately.
It takes place at a cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah. Alex and Ruth McCormick have just buried their son, Andrew, 24, who killed himself because he could not find a way to live with himself. Andrew was gay, and despite a loving relationship with a man named Marcus that had gone on for the past year, he was stuck in a cycle of self-hatred and deeply entrenched guilt. Andrew was also a Mormon, and the Mormon Church says homosexual behavior is a sin.
The play, though, is much more about Alex and Ruth than it is about Andrew. Alex is a successful radio talk show host--his program, "One-Minute Dad," has a couple million loyal listeners in the American Southwest, and it's about to make a bid for national syndication. Ruth is, as her Church tells her to be, a steadfast homemaker, wife, and mother. They have two other children. They loved Andrew, encouraged his musical gift (he played cello in a symphony orchestra), but couldn't accept his homosexuality:
No one in that chapel knew him! [Alex says, graveside] No one should be allowed at a funeral who does not know the person who died. I should not have been allowed at Andrew's funeral!....I need a new funeral! A service that speaks the truth.Facing East depicts this second, important funeral, one in which Alex and Ruth will, for the first time, confront the reality of who their son was, and what their beliefs and actions did to him.
The older I get, the more I realize how much I don't know. But so many people--Ruth is absolutely one of them--are unwavering in their faith. For me, the most important lesson of Facing East is that understanding people like Ruth, who believe devoutly and unquestioningly what they've been taught by parents, teachers, and pastors, may be difficult, but it's essential. Others may be moved by the play's strong stand for gay pride: "God loves me and I am gay," proclaims Marcus, Andrew's partner and lover, at one point. Whatever you take from Facing East will be your truth. What's important is to hear this play, and take its messages to heart.
Pearson, a Mormon whose husband eventually came out to her as a gay man (and eventually died from AIDS), knows her characters inside and out, and depicts them here vividly and compassionately.
January 12, 2022
Beautiful beautiful play. I finished it in one sitting. The conflict between Alex and Ruth as they work out the memories they have of their son Andrew. The presence of his lover, Marcus, is an especially powerful part. I would have loved to experience this live.
June 19, 2007
I attended this play during the revival, and I struggled not to cry openly at the impossibility of Alex's situation, caught as he was between his love for his parents, his partner, his religion and his god. I purchased the book on the way out the door, and when I got home, I read it all the way through. It's not long, but it packed just as hard a punch as the live play. Pearson is occasionally unsubtle in her writing, but overall, I give this five out of five stars for the clarity she brings to the issue.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews