Melissa Inouye
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye was a scholar, historian, professor, writer, and essayist. She worked for the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 2019, and worked on the Global Histories project.
Inouye was born in Newport Beach, California, into an Asian-American family — her mother’s family is Chinese and her father’s family is Japanese — and she was raised in Costa Mesa, California.
Inouye served a Latter-day Saint mission in Taiwan. She met her future husband, Joseph McMullin, who also served in Taiwan, in the Missionary Training Center. They are the parents of four children, Isaiah, Kai, Mika, and Han, with botanical nicknames: Bean, Sprout, Leaf, and Shoot.
She graduated from Harvard University with a degree in East Asian studies in 2003 and a doctorate in East Asian languages and civilization in 2011. She taught in the history departments of Loyola Marymount University and California State University, Los Angeles, while doing research for her doctoral dissertation. She taught in Hong Kong and was a senior lecturer in Asian studies at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Inouye studied the history of Chinese Christianity, global religious movements, women and religion and wrote extensively on such topics. She was a featured speaker at numerous events, lectures, and podcasts.
Inouye and her family moved to Xiamen, China, to research her first book, China and the True Jesus: Charisma and Organization in a Chinese Christian Church. She is the author of Sacred Struggle: Seeking Christ on the Path of Most Resistance. She co-wrote the book Every Needful Thing: Essays on the Life of the Mind and the Heart with Kate Holbrook, who died from cancer in 2022. She also wrote Crossings: A Bald Asian American Latter-day Saint Woman Scholar's Ventures Through Life, Death, Cancer, and Motherhood. She penned a memoir which is expected to be published posthumously.
Inouye helped create the Global Mormon Studies research network and was an advisory board member of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. She was a senior fellow with the Foundation of Religious Diplomacy.
She died on Tuesday, April 23, 2024, at the age of 44, following a seven-year battle with cancer.
