Zenna Henderson

Zenna Chlarson Henderson (November 1, 1917-May 11, 1983) was an Arizona elementary school teacher who wrote a series of fantasy novellas and short stories. She was born in 1917 in Tucson, Arizona, the daughter of Louis Rudolph Chlarson and Emily Vernell Rowley. She received a bachelor of arts in education from Arizona State College in 1940, and taught school in the Tucson, Arizona area. She also taught in France and in a Japanese relocation camp during World War II. She married Richard Harry Henderson in 1943, but they were divorced seven years later.

Henderson was one of the first female science fiction authors, and never used a male pen name. Henderson's portrayal of strong, capable female protagonists is not unique in the 50's and 60's, but she stands out as one of the most prominent writers to portray well-adjusted women in positions of power and authority, such as education, with consistent success.

Most of her stories focus on the theme of being different, and often feature children or young people. Most are concerned with "The People", humanoid beings from a faraway planet who are forced to emigrate to (among other places) Earth when their home world is destroyed in a natural disaster. Scattered throughout the American Southwest during their landing before 1900, they are set apart by their desire to preserve their home culture, including their religious and spiritual beliefs. Their unusual abilities include telepathy, telekinesis, prophecy and healing. The stories describe groups of The People, as well as lonely isolated individuals, as they attempt to find communities and remain distinct in a world that does not understand them.

Zenna Henderson was one of the first science fiction or fantasy authors to include openly the subject of religion and its controversies. Though many religious groups identify with her, the standard reference Contemporary Authors lists her religion as Methodist. She was born and baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But after her marriage, she was no longer a practicing Mormon. In an interview, she stated that she often included religious themes because her readers, particularly her young readers, liked them. She felt it was good to offer a word for "Our Sponsor" in her stories. In her later years, she attended an independent charismatic fellowship.

Beginning with Ararat (1952), Henderson's People stories appeared in magazines and anthologies, as well as the novelized Pilgrimage: The Book of the People (1961) and The People: No Different Flesh (1966). Other volumes include The People Collection (1991) and Ingathering: The Complete People Stories (1995).

Henderson was an extremely private person, and rarely gave interviews. Some of the best qualities of her writing are her inclusion of alluring throwaway details, showing how casual the People are about their abilities, and her talent for conveying visceral emotion. She was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1959 for her novelette Captivity.

By today's standards, the People stories are somewhat sentimental, and Henderson's personal worldview may have been closer to the bitter, angry tone found in her non-People short stories, collected in two volumes, The Anything Box and Holding Wonder. Decades before Stephen King, Henderson's portrayal of her students, her fellow teachers, and school staff was sometimes merciless in its stark honesty. She touches on mental illness in several tales, including obsessive-compulsive disorder in "Swept and Garnished", and agoraphobia in "Incident After". In "One Of Them", a woman's latent telepathic powers cause her to lose her identity as she unwittingly probes the minds of her co-workers.

Among other themes, Henderson's call in her stories for racial equality and understanding is particularly well expressed in the short story "The Closest School", where a xenophobic school board president reaches outside himself to admit a gentle little girl who happens to be a furry, purple 14-eyed alien. But some modern reviewers criticize Henderson for her offensive caricatures of Hispanics, such as Severeid Swanson of "Wilderness", and of Jews, who only appear once in her work, as the fat, loudmouthed Jewish couple in "Sharing Time". No African Americans and only one Native American is ever seen, as a walk-on, despite the American Southwest locale of virtually all her stories. But her defenders suggest that given the nearly exclusively white middle class readership of science fiction in the 40's and 50's, the orientation of her stories is typical of her generation. Cochise County, Arizona, where she was buried, is fairly ethnically homogeneous, with few African Americans or Native Americans.

In 1972, Henderson's story "Pottage" was made into an ABC-TV Movie, "The People", starring William Shatner, Kim Darby and Diane Varsi. Many of her fans believe that her People books also influenced the writing of Alexander Key, particularly Escape to Witch Mountain, which was later made into a Disney film.

Zenna Henderson died of cancer in 1983 in Tucson, Arizona and was buried in Pioneer Cemetery, St. David, Arizona.

Bibliography

• Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson (ISBN 0915368587)

External links

• Zenna Henderson Home Page (http://www.adherents.com/lit/bk_Zenna.html) Unofficial fan page with many commentaries and reviews.
• A Zenna Henderson Bibliography (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Zenna_Henderson.htm)
• Mormon Literature Database (http://mormonlit.lib.byu.edu/lit_author.php?a_id=2767)