Zenna Henderson

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Zenna Chlarson Henderson (November 1, 1917 – May 11, 1983) was an American 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 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 1950s and 1960s, 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 mostly 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 ("Gifts") include telepathy, telekinesis, prophecy and healing, mostly manipulated through the "Signs and Persuasions". The stories describe groups of The People, as well as lonely isolated individuals, most often as they attempt to find communities and remain distinct in a world that does not understand them. This aspect of individuality was a common theme in most of Henderson's writing.

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, though there is no known record of her being a member of any Methodist church. She was born and baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But after her marriage, she was no longer a churchgoing Latter-day Saint, though she never renounced her membership. 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. An early editorial review commented that her in-depth treatment of the People's practices indicated a "more intimate knowledge" than she had publicly admitted.

She was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1959 for her novelette Captivity, and remains a favorite author of many science fiction fans worldwide, despite the fact that her books are long out of print.

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 a stereotypical characterization of Hispanics (e.g., Severeid Swanson in "Wilderness"), while failing to notice the positive treatment of Hispanics in the same stories which they criticize. Only one minor character in Henderson's fiction is overtly identified as a Native American, despite the American Southwest locale of so many of her stories. The paucity of racial diversity in Henderson's stories is typical of her generation of writers. Even today, Cochise County, Arizona, where Henderson was buried, is fairly ethnically homogeneous, with few Native Americans or other non-Hispanic ethnic minorities.

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.