“Howard Zinn
and Lois Mottonen Fistfight in the Equality State.”
That’s the
title of my fourth book, released on the first anniversary of Lois’s death. Her
memoir is published by WordsWorth Publishers of Cody, Wyoming. The book is
available be emailing me at rmc81448@gmail.com or at https://wordsworthpublishing.com/catalog/
This
remarkable woman called me in 2014. She read my book “Dying for Joe McCarthy’s
Sins: The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt.” Lois wanted me to write a
book for her. Lois didn’t have a clear vision. She was generally thinking of a
book about the lives of women in Wyoming.
I declined,
believing a book about Wyoming women ought to be written by a woman.
Lois called
again, in 2016, this time more certain. The older she got, the more anguished
she became about the lives of woman, racial and cultural minorities in what is
euphemistically called “the Equality State.” She wanted to tell their stories.
Her
grandparents emigrated from Finland in the late 1800s. She grew up during the
Depression and World War II. Lois lived in the old mining camp, Winton, and
attended school in Rock Springs before heading to the University of Wyoming.
Despite
graduating with honors and becoming the second Wyoming woman to earn an
accountancy certificate, Lois found firms in Cheyenne or Denver unwilling to
hire a woman.
Between Lois
and her family, the Mottonen’s lived in Wyoming from the beginning. She was
offended by the effort of the 2nd Territorial Legislature to repeal
the right to vote given women by the 1st Territorial Legislature.
She celebrated Nellie Tayloe Ross’s being elected first woman governor but
bemoaned that a woman was never again permitted to serve.
Lois was
outraged by the Black 14 incident and the murder of Matthew Shepard and the
unwillingness of Wyoming politicians to enact a hate crimes law. Having been
victimized by employer discrimination, she was appalled by the wage gender gap.
Lois was
looking for a writer who shared her belief that calling Wyoming “the Equality
State” doesn’t make it so.
For nearly
two years, Lois and I met every Monday afternoon. I listened. She told her
story and the stories of her parents and grandparents, telling of their
struggles, connecting her personal experiences to the stories of
tens-of-thousands of Wyoming people who are kicked to the curb because of their
skin color, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs or other
characteristics that don’t line up with the contrived cowboy image to which
many want to cling.
Lois wanted Howard Zinn the tell the story. He wasn’t available. So, she
asked me.
“Howard Zinn…meet Wyoming.” Professor
Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present,” is an honest
look at U.S. history, the sort of which Lois wanted for Wyoming. Sherman
Alexie’s classic, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” provided
readers a glimpse into the importance of symbols and images in building a
non-existent reality. It seemed appropriate to carve this book’s title from
those.
“Howard Zinn and Lois Mottonen
Fistfight in the Equality State,” attempts a Zinn-like history of how Wyoming’s
women, working people, racial, ethnic, and religious minorities are treated,
posing the troubling question Alexie asked in his poem entitled “Hymn.”
But, how much do you love the
strange and the stranger?
Hey, Caveman, do you see only danger
When you peer into the night? Are you afraid
Of the country that exists outside
your cave?
Hey, Caveman, when are you going to
evolve?
Are you still afraid of the way
the earth revolves
Around the sun and not the
other way around?
Are you terrified of the
ever-shifting ground?
In November 2017, Lois was
diagnosed with a brain tumor and left this world on December 6 before this book
could be published. She had, however, read the draft and approved of it.
Afterward, she smiled and said, “You know, you and I are going to catch a lot
of hell over this book.”
It would be a tribute to her if
we did.
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