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When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice cover art

When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Written by: Terry Tempest Williams
Narrated by: Terry Tempest Williams
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Publisher's Summary

The beloved author of Refuge returns with a work that explodes and startles, illuminates and celebrates.

Terry Tempest Williams's mother told her: "I am leaving you all my journals, but you must promise me you won't look at them until after I'm gone."

Fans of Williams's iconic and unconventional memoir, Refuge, well remember that mother. She was a member of a large Mormon clan in northern Utah who developed cancer as a result of the nuclear testing in nearby Nevada. It was a shock to Williams to discover that her mother had kept journals. But not as much of a shock as what she found when the time came to read them.

They were exactly where she said they would be: three shelves of beautiful cloth-bound books.... "I opened the first journal. It was empty. I opened the second journal. It was empty. I opened the third. It too was empty.... Shelf after shelf after shelf, all of my mother's journals were blank."

What did Williams's mother mean by that? In 54 chapters that unfold like a series of yoga poses, each with its own logic and beauty, Williams creates a lyrical and caring meditation of the mystery of her mother's journals. When Women Were Birds is a kaleidoscope that keeps turning around the question "What does it mean to have a voice?"

©2012 Terry Tempest Williams (P)2012 Wind Over The Earth

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Passionate and Mysterious

I was transported! This author reads her work with passion and her themes draw out the love I experience - in nature, for people and she identifies the love I have always known for God. TTW addresses the issue of women not speaking out when they must. She advocates that we must find our voice. I sense that she found her voice in the writing of this book. Her relationship with her Mother is a central theme but it does not overshadow her deep insight into the person who she has become and is still becoming. She addresses the issue of choice - especially choosing not to become a mother who gives birth to her own child(ren). She mothers in other ways - adopting an adult son and being the most caring person she knows how to be when it comes to caring about nature. This is a book I shall go back to time and again - it is a book we shall be reading together in our Feminist Spirituality Book Club. It is a book, about which I have shared excerpts with my spouse and he, too, was enthralled. We talk about this author's experiences and her way of telling her stories. This book will live with me and I with it for some time to come. Read it! Or, even better, listen to it.

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