AUDIO BOOK REVIEW: Women and their voices in Terry Tempest Williams' "When Women Were Birds"
/ Friday, May 30, 2014
When I began listening to "When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice," I didn't anticipate how Terry Tempest Williams' words — and voice — would resonate, especially in the wake of last weekend's murders in Santa Barbara of college students and the "manifesto" written and videotaped by the killer, Elliot Rodger.
The outpouring of social-media anguish over Rodger's statements about taking revenge on women who, in his estimation, had spurned him, seems in some ways to mirror Williams' thoughtful series of meditations on women and how they choose, or choose not to, express themselves.
Williams' book, which she effectively (and appropriately) narrates herself, was sparked by this astounding detail: When her mother was dying of breast cancer at age 54, she gave her journals to Williams, with the stipulation that she not read them until after her mother's death.
But when Williams found them — shelf after shelf of cloth-bound journals — they contained no words at all. Just blank pages.
"In Mormon culture, women are expected to do two things: keep a journal and bear children," writes Williams, who like her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother before her is a Mormon living in Utah, kin to the Romney family. "Both gestures are a participatory bow to the past and to the future. In telling a story, personal knowledge and continuity are maintained. My mother kept her journals and bore four children: a daughter and three sons. I am her daughter, in love with words. The repetitions of her journals reach me in waves. Diving beneath them is my only protection."
Williams set out to fill what she perceived as her mother's longing.
"I will rewrite this story, create my own story on the pages of my mother's journals."
She chooses to write in pencil on the blank pages, not ink, but then goes into an elaborate dissertation on the meaning of the word "erasure" and how it applies to the elimination or silencing of a person.
There are a number of striking episodes in the book, including a terrifying encounter in the Sawtooth Wilderness of Idaho, where Williams was a teaching assistant for a field ecology course. One day as she was writing, she was approached by a man she'd seen at the camp, who invited her to go on a walk. Despite her intuition screaming that it was a bad idea, she went, only to narrowly avoid calamity.
"What are the consequences when we go against our instincts?
"What are the consequences of not speaking out?
"What are the consequences of guilt, shame and doubt?"
The book is filled with poetic ruminations on those blank journals, on what her mother was trying to communicate, on what women share and what they keep secret. It's a lovely read, easy to listen to for its meditative qualities and the rhythm of the language.
"I hold my mother's journals as another paradox, journals without words that create a narrative of the imagination."
(And I wound up buying a print copy as well, only to discover something interesting: sections of blank pages.)
AUDIO BOOK REVIEW
WHEN WOMEN WERE BIRDS: FIFTY-FOUR VARIATIONS ON VOICE. Written and narrated by Terry Tempest Williams. Wind Over the Earth. Unabridged, 4 hours, 35 minutes.
WHEN WOMEN WERE BIRDS: FIFTY-FOUR VARIATIONS ON VOICE.
Written and narrated by Terry Tempest Williams. Wind Over the Earth. Unabridged, 4 hours, 35 minutes.
Artist Origin Story: Jill Hoffman-Kowal