“As many readers may know already, Williams wrote movingly in Refuge about the history of her family as down-winders in Utah, the death of her mother from cancer and her own struggles. Her latest book harkens back to her mother’s death, but is more difficult to define. Before she died, her mother told Terry to read her journals after she was gone. There were three shelves filled with them. As it turns out, every single one of them was blank. In When Women Were Birds, Williams searches out the meaning of those empty pages, the meaning of white, while exploring both her life, her mother’s life and the lives of women she knows. Williams has a very unique and moving voice. Sometimes as I was reading along I would have to put the book down and pause to feel what I just read—she just does that to you. It’s like a series of epiphanies, and the meanings she ascribes to the blank white pages, metaphors for life, reasons to find your voice. Williams has given us all the gift of insight and introspection in this unusually crafted memoir. It took my breath away.”—Sue, Paulina Springs Books, Sisters and Redmond, OR. Buy When Women Were Birds from Paulina Springs Books.
Face Out
When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice by Terry Tempest Williams
May 29, 2012