TTW: When Women Were Birds

The moment I purchased my copy of When Women Were Birds I knew that Terry Tempest Williams would not disappoint me. The dust jacket is pure white with birds imprinted into it, you can feel them but barely see them. Beneath the dust jacket the book is light grey. The color of an eggshell or a sun-warmed stone. Inside the front and back cover the pages are filled with black and white feathers and in the middle of the edge of every right-hand page is a tiny silhouetted bird in flight. Thumbing through the pages quickly is like a flip book showing the bird flapping its wings up and down. The aesthetics of the book alone held my interest for days before I began to read.

TTW is my favorite author. She is an LDS woman, a feminist, an environmentalist. She writes with passion and conviction. She tells stories that are true. Her writing engages my spirit. I was priveleged enough to here her speak two years ago at the UO after releasing her previous book Finding Beauty in a Broken World. As I sat in the audience I tried to absorb her every word into my mind and lock it there. I was willing her to know that I was there and I too am an LDS woman that doesn't fit the mold. She reminds me that I am not alone and that I am not crazy. Although I have not made and do not plan on making all of the same choices that she has, she validates me with her words. She expresses what I feel more eloquently than I can. She is an advocate for having a personal religion, a doctrine that you and only you abide by and so do I.

Her new book is a personal expression about women, their likeness to birds, their trials, their choices. She discusses life and death in a way that makes them both seem beautiful. I love that much of what she reveals causes me to reflect on my own choices and feelings as a woman, as an LDS woman, as an activist and as a writer. I could never write a book review that could do this book justice or that could convey the power and depth of TTW's writing. Regardless, I encourage you to read it.


Here are just a sampling of the passages that really struck a chord with me:

"If there ever was a story without a shadow, it would be this: that we as women exist in direct sunlight only. When women were birds, we knew otherwise. We knew our greatest freedom was in taking flight at night, when we could steal the heavenly darkness for ourselves, navigating through the intelligence of stars and the constellations of our own making in the delight and terror of our uncertainty." (17-18)


"When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship." (25)


"Conversation is the vehicle for change. We test our ideas. We hear our own voice in concert with another. And inside of those pauses of listening, we approach new territories of thought. A good argument, call it a discussion, frees us. Words fly out of our mouths like threatened birds. Once released they may never return. If they do, they have chosen a home and the bird-words are calmed into an ars poetica." (49)


"When I proclaimed my history and my sovereignty at the same time, standing behind the pulpit in front of my religious community, even then I knew I was breaking taboo. I couldn't have said exactly why, but I knew enough to know that we were expected to follow an unbreakable pattern through time even though our Mormon history was brief." (55)


"For far too long we have been seduced into walking a path that did not lead us to ourselves. For far too long we have said yes when we wanted to say no. And for far too long we have said no when we deperately wanted to say yes." (114)






I like to think I am descended from birds. I have always yearned to fly and I know that I will someday.