When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
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When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice Paperback – February 26, 2013
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Williams displays a Whitmanesque embrace of the world and its contradictions....As the pages accumulate, her voice grows in majesty and power until it become a full-fledged aria."—San Francisco Chronicle
“This poetic memoir continues the work Williams began in Refuge....Williams explores her mother’s identity—woman, wife, mother, and Mormon—as she continues to honor her memory....A lyrical and elliptical meditation on women, nature, family, and history.”—The Boston Globe
"Williams is the kind of writer who makes a reader feel that [her] voice might also, one day, be heard….She cancels out isolation: Connections are woven as you sit in your chair reading---between you and the place you live, between you and other readers, you and the writer. Without knowing how it happened, your sense of home is deepened."—Susan Salter Reynolds, The Daily Beast "Time, experience, and uncanny coincidence spiral through these pages….When Women Were Birds is an extraordinary echo chamber in which lessons about voice—passed along from mother, to daughter, and now to us—will reverberate differently in each inner ear."—The Seattle Times
“A beautiful, powerful, important book….Nothing I’ve ever read has done this to me. Is this what religious people feel when they pray, I wonder? ...Terry Tempest Williams has written something that has revealed me and affirmed me and changed me. In sharing her voice, she has summoned mine.” —Rebecca Joines Schinsky, Book Riot
"In some ways When Women Were Birds functions as a detective story, an attempt to solve a mystery. But it’s also a realization that often there are no answers…there’s only the present."—The Salt Lake Tribune
"A lyrical, timeless book that rewards quiet, attentive reading—a rare thing."—The Huffington Post
“This poetic memoir continues the work Williams began in Refuge....Williams explores her mother’s identity—woman, wife, mother, and Mormon—as she continues to honor her memory....A lyrical and elliptical meditation on women, nature, family, and history.”—The Boston Globe
"Williams is the kind of writer who makes a reader feel that [her] voice might also, one day, be heard….She cancels out isolation: Connections are woven as you sit in your chair reading---between you and the place you live, between you and other readers, you and the writer. Without knowing how it happened, your sense of home is deepened."—Susan Salter Reynolds, The Daily Beast "Time, experience, and uncanny coincidence spiral through these pages….When Women Were Birds is an extraordinary echo chamber in which lessons about voice—passed along from mother, to daughter, and now to us—will reverberate differently in each inner ear."—The Seattle Times
“A beautiful, powerful, important book….Nothing I’ve ever read has done this to me. Is this what religious people feel when they pray, I wonder? ...Terry Tempest Williams has written something that has revealed me and affirmed me and changed me. In sharing her voice, she has summoned mine.” —Rebecca Joines Schinsky, Book Riot
"In some ways When Women Were Birds functions as a detective story, an attempt to solve a mystery. But it’s also a realization that often there are no answers…there’s only the present."—The Salt Lake Tribune
"A lyrical, timeless book that rewards quiet, attentive reading—a rare thing."—The Huffington Post
"At some point I realized I was reading every page twice trying to memorize each insight, each bit of hard-won wisdom. Then I realized I could keep it on my bedside table and read it every night."—Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted
About the Author
Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of fourteen books, including Leap, An Unspoken Hunger, Refuge, and, most recently, Finding Beauty in a Broken World. She divides her time between Castle Valley, Utah, and Moose, Wyoming.
More About the Author
She is the award-winning author of Leap, An Unspoken Hunger, Refuge & most recently Red - A Desert Reader. She lives in Castle Valley, Utah.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
106 of 120 people found the following review helpful
By
Westword
on April 10, 2012
Format: Hardcover
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As a guy who loves women, I hesitated a bit before diving into this book. But once I did, there was no turning back. The idea of blank journal pages (and actual blank pages in the book) forced me to think about my role in silencing women and what I may have missed as a result. I also wondered about the self-silencing I've done in order to toe the line, be 'part of the team', or not make waves. The full spectrum of settings for Terry's use of voice, not using her voice, or having her voice squelched, misinterpreted, or ignored--from the most intimately personal to the halls of congress--suggest that this issue is multidimensional and epidemic. In fact,the current 'war on women' being staged during the republican primaries seems to be one more (hopefully, last ditch) effort to silence women as a means to more power and control. The depths to which our country seems to be plummeting (pulling the entire planet along with us) suggests that we try something new: let women run things. When Women Were Birds, what were men?(Trees? Rivers?) Letting women be birds once again may be our best hope.
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86 of 98 people found the following review helpful
By
David Seaman
VINE VOICE on March 16, 2012
Format: Hardcover
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If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it does it make a sound?
What does it mean to have a voice?
Terry Tempest Williams has delivered a testament with "When Women Were Birds." It's a tiny little book; very subtle; very polite; very powerful. This is non-fiction. This is not a memoir yet we travel through her life with her; this is not religious, though we are given a cat's eye view of the Mormon home; this is not a love story, though it overflows with love. This is an edict. This is a decree; a proclamation. Finally this is a manifesto. I have never come away from a book feeling so filled, fulfilled, fiercely powerful and fiercely empathetic. Joseph Campbell's "The Power of Myth" is a spiritual book for which I've never seen or heard a harsh or even ambivalent review, professional or otherwise. "When Women Were Birds" is more powerful than that. (Williams quotes Campbell at one point. In fact, she quotes poets, philosophers and authors throughout). It falls to me now to summarize this book and then to urge you with the power of my words to buy this book. Yet I feel less than equipped to do this because my writing is to Terry Tempest Williams as Roseanne's singing is to Barbra Streisand or Audra McDonald.
See my problem?
Part of solving my problem is that I shall write in first person. An atypical book requires an atypical review: an essay is needed. Chapter one begins: "[Mother] was dying in the same way she was living, consciously. `I am leaving you all my journals but you must promise me that you will not look at them until after I am gone.' I gave her my word... A week later she died."There were three shelves of beautiful clothbound books. "The spines of each were perfectly aligned against the lip of the shelves.Read more ›
What does it mean to have a voice?
Terry Tempest Williams has delivered a testament with "When Women Were Birds." It's a tiny little book; very subtle; very polite; very powerful. This is non-fiction. This is not a memoir yet we travel through her life with her; this is not religious, though we are given a cat's eye view of the Mormon home; this is not a love story, though it overflows with love. This is an edict. This is a decree; a proclamation. Finally this is a manifesto. I have never come away from a book feeling so filled, fulfilled, fiercely powerful and fiercely empathetic. Joseph Campbell's "The Power of Myth" is a spiritual book for which I've never seen or heard a harsh or even ambivalent review, professional or otherwise. "When Women Were Birds" is more powerful than that. (Williams quotes Campbell at one point. In fact, she quotes poets, philosophers and authors throughout). It falls to me now to summarize this book and then to urge you with the power of my words to buy this book. Yet I feel less than equipped to do this because my writing is to Terry Tempest Williams as Roseanne's singing is to Barbra Streisand or Audra McDonald.
See my problem?
Part of solving my problem is that I shall write in first person. An atypical book requires an atypical review: an essay is needed. Chapter one begins: "[Mother] was dying in the same way she was living, consciously. `I am leaving you all my journals but you must promise me that you will not look at them until after I am gone.' I gave her my word... A week later she died."There were three shelves of beautiful clothbound books. "The spines of each were perfectly aligned against the lip of the shelves.Read more ›
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49 of 59 people found the following review helpful
By
emmejay
VINE VOICE on April 3, 2012
Format: Hardcover
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"In Mormon culture, women are expected to do two things: keep a journal and bear children. Both gestures are a participatory bow to the past and the future."
So what did it mean when Williams -- a writer, "in love with words" -- took custody of her mother's 35 journals upon her death ... and found them all completely empty? Williams reels from the discovery ("her blank journals became a second death"), and 24 years later, processes it via vignettes here.
I should have loved this book. I'm the age of the author and of her mother when she died. My own mother recently died. I love explorations of voice and stillness, I love narratives structured as vignettes (e.g. Touch, Einstein's Dreams, The Incident Report). So I began slowly, savoring the passages and giving them time to arrange themselves. When little seemed to accumulate, I read them without breaks.
In the end, I liked the book more than loved it. There's evocative language; family, feminism and nature; being heard and being silenced. But while I was interested enough to finish, I never much grew to understand or care about Williams. I suspect readers already familiar with her (e.g. via Refuge) will have a much different, better reading experience. Perhaps I'll read that, and come back to this in a year.
So what did it mean when Williams -- a writer, "in love with words" -- took custody of her mother's 35 journals upon her death ... and found them all completely empty? Williams reels from the discovery ("her blank journals became a second death"), and 24 years later, processes it via vignettes here.
I should have loved this book. I'm the age of the author and of her mother when she died. My own mother recently died. I love explorations of voice and stillness, I love narratives structured as vignettes (e.g. Touch, Einstein's Dreams, The Incident Report). So I began slowly, savoring the passages and giving them time to arrange themselves. When little seemed to accumulate, I read them without breaks.
In the end, I liked the book more than loved it. There's evocative language; family, feminism and nature; being heard and being silenced. But while I was interested enough to finish, I never much grew to understand or care about Williams. I suspect readers already familiar with her (e.g. via Refuge) will have a much different, better reading experience. Perhaps I'll read that, and come back to this in a year.
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27 of 31 people found the following review helpful
By
Yours Truly
VINE VOICE on February 29, 2012
Format: Hardcover
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More than two decades have passed since Terry Tempest Williams wrote her master work, Refuge, about her mother's death from cancer and the movements of the Great Salt Lake. As a mature woman, she revisits the themes that have shaped her writing: women's connections with one another, her fascination with birds that began with one grandmother's tutelage, her long marriage to a fellow Mormon reprobate, the ways in which we parent and nurture, her exploration of the world's broken and sacred places, the Utah wilderness, danger, mortality.
This work, begun with the gift of her mother's journals, which Terry opened after she died, is about claiming one's voice and sustaining it. It is sparse, poetic, and, at times, mystical. I loved it! She is a prophet for our times.
This work, begun with the gift of her mother's journals, which Terry opened after she died, is about claiming one's voice and sustaining it. It is sparse, poetic, and, at times, mystical. I loved it! She is a prophet for our times.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By
Diane Kistner
TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on June 1, 2012
Format: Hardcover
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I have tried to get into this book; really, I have. But there is too much of a creative-writing-class "writing prompt" quality to it that prevents me from becoming engaged: "What would you write if you inherited a bunch of empty journals from your mother? Fill up the first ten pages for the next class."
The make-book style of writing is not my cup of tea. I can't help but imagine the author sticking index cards into Scrivener, writing a bit into each of them while multitasking the rest of her life, then spending a few hours shuffling the sequence before generating—voila!—a book. Alas, it's not the kind of book that encourages my attention, much less interest. Maybe that's just me.
I think another reviewer's suggestion to read other works by Terry Tempest Williams before reading this one is a good one. Coming into When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice already feeling a connection to author might make for a more significant reading experience.
The make-book style of writing is not my cup of tea. I can't help but imagine the author sticking index cards into Scrivener, writing a bit into each of them while multitasking the rest of her life, then spending a few hours shuffling the sequence before generating—voila!—a book. Alas, it's not the kind of book that encourages my attention, much less interest. Maybe that's just me.
I think another reviewer's suggestion to read other works by Terry Tempest Williams before reading this one is a good one. Coming into When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice already feeling a connection to author might make for a more significant reading experience.
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