When Women Were Birds

Terry Tempest Williams’s When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice (2012) is a unique collection that explores some of life’s most profound questions. A week before Williams’s mother dies, she tells her that she has left her several journals but that she is not to look at them until after she has passed. When Williams does examine the journals, she is shocked to see that all three shelves of journals have been left blank, just waiting to be filled. In fifty-four short chapters, the author reminisces on memories of her mother, contemplates her own faith, and meditates on the nature of art. A carefully fashioned prism of introspection, When Women Were Birds ultimately explores the question of what it means to have a voice.

Williams opens the book by writing about her mother’s death and the blank journals her mother left for her to fill. Seeing the blank journals was like experiencing her mother’s death all over again. Realizing that her mother’s inner workings will remain a mystery because she did not write in the journals, Williams opens her discussion of voice by recalling that her mother’s voice was the first one she ever heard. The author decides to write her own story in the journals her mother left for her.

Williams uses a pencil to write in the journals because she is comforted by the notion of erasing her words entirely. She compiles a definition of “erasure” and an accompanying list of synonyms. She introduces her father, who had an intense presence. He was a doer, a storyteller, and a rugged, outdoorsy type. Her mother was also intense but in a different way. At an early age, her mother introduced her to Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” an orchestral rendering of the fairy tale. This allowed Williams to learn about voice, the balance of nature, and the dignity of each animal. She shares that her grandmother gave her a copy of A Field Guild to Western Birds, which she still has. Williams tells of a time when her grandmother told her they are a part of nature.



Williams also reminisces on being in the fourth grade and having a lisp. She was forced to take speech lessons and began practicing speaking by reading poetry. It is here that she believes she first fell in love with words and that her voice found her. She contemplates what it is that gives a person a voice. In the Mormon tradition into which she was born, mothers are expected to keep journals and pass them on to their daughters. Whereas Williams’s mother wanted to keep her thoughts private, Williams wants her voice to be heard.

Williams then turns to art, comparing her mother’s blank journals with John Cage’s piano masterpiece 4’33”, which intended to measure the effect of silence on people. This made many angry as no music was playing, and several people left the theater. In the art world, “White Paintings” are similar as they lack images and colors. Some people said these works even scared them. In comparing these works to her mother’s blank journals, Williams admits her fear of silence.

Williams focuses on musicians who use bird songs in their compositions and explains how birds became a compass point that also led her to her husband. She describes how, while working at Sam Weller’s Bookstore, she overheard a man claim that his life’s dream was to own all the Peterson field guides. She explained that she already had them, and the two married on June 2, 1975.



Williams returns to her mother, including a personal note from a birthday card her mother had sent to her for her twenty-fifth birthday. Williams, however, has negative associations with this birthday because she was shown a slideshow of her life, which left her feeling bored with it. She decided to stop teaching, put off having children, and enroll in graduate school. Williams realized at this point that finding her voice was the most important thing.

Williams explores how humans can give a voice to creation. She delves into the creation myth of Adam and Eve, ultimately concluding that Eve, rather than evil, chose sin and betrayal in order to discover her own voice. Williams, then, is writing her own creation story—the creation of her voice—using her mother’s journals.

When Williams received a cut close to her eye by a falcon while canoeing, she contemplated the sudden nature of death. For her, the bird represented things and events she could not see coming. She thought of these things, including the death of her mother, as a sign that she needed to speak out. She imagined herself and her family as a clan, and twenty-two years later when she recalled this image, the notion of “When Women Were Birds” came to her mind. Williams came to believe that if women lived in a voiced community, they would all come to flourish.