The beloved author of Refuge returns with a work that explodes and startles, illuminates and celebrates

Terry Tempest Williams’s mother told her:Ěý“I am leaving you all my journals, but you must promise me you won’t look at them until after I’m gone.â€�

Readers of Williams’s iconic and unconventional memoir, Refuge, well remember that mother.ĚýShe was one of a large Mormon clan in northern Utah who developed cancer as a result of the nuclear testing in nearby Nevada. It was a shock to Williams to discover thatĚýher mother had kept journals.ĚýBut not as much of a shock as what she found when the time came to read them.ĚýĚý

“They were exactly where she said they would be: three shelves of beautiful cloth-bound books . . . I opened the first journal.ĚýIt was empty. I opened the second journal.ĚýIt was empty.ĚýI opened the third.ĚýIt too was empty . . . Shelf after shelf after shelf, all of my mother’s journals were blank.â€� What did Williams’s mother mean by that? InĚýfifty-four chapters that unfold like a series of yoga poses, each with its own logic and beauty, Williams creates a lyrical and caring meditation of the mystery of her mother's journals. When Women Were Birds is a kaleidoscope that keeps turning around the question “What does it mean to have aĚývoice?â€�

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