"I am leaving you all my journals, but you must promise me you won't look at them until after I'm gone." This is what Terry Tempest Williams' mother, the matriarch of a large Mormon clan in northern Utah, told her a week before she died. It was a shock to Williams to discover that her mother had kept journals. But not as much of a shock to discover that the three shelves of journals were all blank. In fifty-four short chapters, Williams recounts memories of her mother, ponders her own Mormon faith, and contemplates the notion of absence in art and in our world. When "Women Were Birds" is a carefully crafted kaleidoscope that keeps turning around the question: What does it mean to have a voice?
- ISBN10 1250024110
- ISBN13 9781250024114
- Publish Date 26 February 2013 (first published 10 April 2012)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 5 April 2024
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Picador USA
- Format Paperback
- Pages 256
- Language English