When Women Were Birds
Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Author: Terry Tempest Williams
$18.00
Trade Paperbacke-BookFormat
About This Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year
“Brilliant, meditative, and full of surprises, wisdom, and wonder.”—Ann Lamott, author…
Book Details
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year
“Brilliant, meditative, and full of surprises, wisdom, and wonder.”—Ann Lamott, author of Imperfect Birds
“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’s 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 as it was 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 faith, and contemplates the notion of absence and presence 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?
Imprint Publisher
Picador
ISBN
9781250024114
Reading Guide
In The News
“Williams displays a Whitmanesque embrace of the world and its contradictions….As the pages accumulate, her voice grows in majesty and power until it become a full-fledged aria.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“This poetic memoir continues the work Williams began in Refuge….Williams explores her mother’s identity–woman, wife, mother, and Mormon–as she continues to honor her memory….A lyrical and elliptical meditation on women, nature, family, and history.
” —The Boston Globe
“Williams is the kind of writer who makes a reader feel that [her] voice might also, one day, be heard….She cancels out isolation: Connections are woven as you sit in your chair reading—between you and the place you live, between you and other readers, you and the writer. Without knowing how it happened, your sense of home is deepened.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, The Daily Beast
“Time, experience, and uncanny coincidence spiral through these pages….When Women Were Birds is an extraordinary echo chamber in which lessons about voice–passed along from mother, to daughter, and now to us–will reverberate differently in each inner ear.” —The Seattle Times
“A beautiful, powerful, important book….Nothing I’ve ever read has done this to me. Is this what religious people feel when they pray, I wonder? …Terry Tempest Williams has written something that has revealed me and affirmed me and changed me. In sharing her voice, she has summoned mine.
” —Rebecca Joines Schinsky, Book Riot
“In some ways When Women Were Birds functions as a detective story, an attempt to solve a mystery. But it’s also a realization that often there are no answers…there’s only the present.” —The Salt Lake Tribune
“A lyrical, timeless book that rewards quiet, attentive reading–a rare thing.” —The Huffington Post
“At some point I realized I was reading every page twice trying to memorize each insight, each bit of hard-won wisdom. Then I realized I could keep it on my bedside table and read it every night.” —Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted
About the Creators
$18.00
Trade Paperbacke-BookFormat
The best books about women, birds, and nature
By Tessa BoaseWho am I?
I’m an investigative journalist and social historian who’s obsessed with ‘invisible’ women of the 19th and early 20th century, bringing their stories to life in highly readable narrative non-fiction.
I love the detective work involved in resurrecting ordinary women’s lives: shop girls, milliners, campaigning housewives, servants. . . The stories I’ve uncovered are gripping, often shocking and frequently poignant – but also celebrate women’s determination, solidarity and capacity for reinvention. Each of my two books took me on a long research journey deep into the archives: The Housekeeper’s Tale – the Women Who Really Ran the English Country House, and Etta Lemon – The Woman Who Saved the Birds.
Shepherd is reader supported.
We may earn an
affiliate commission
when you buy through links on our website. This is how we fund the project for readers and authors.
Please join our membership program
to support our endeavor.
The books I picked & why
By
Kyo Maclear,
Why this book?
A perfectly formed, intimate epiphany of a book about birdwatching, by a non-birdwatcher. Unmoored by her father’s illness, Maclear tries to find a way of making life make sense.
She experiments with calligraphy; she wrestles with writer’s block. One day she meets a birdwatching musician, who explains how the activity helps dissipate his worries and daily pressures. Intrigued, she asks if she can tag along. Reluctant at first, and almost despite herself, the author begins to find peace and unexpected beauty in the urban landscape. She discovers that simply being still triggers introspection. This is also a book about the tension between freedom and confinement – something that resonates particularly for me, as a writer with children.
By
Kyo Maclear,
Why should I read it?
1
author picked
Birds Art Life Death
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
What is this book about?
We live in a world that prizes the fast over the slow, the new over the familiar and work over rest. Birds Art Life Death is Kyo Maclear’s beautiful journey to stake out a sense of meaning amid the crushing rush.
One winter Kyo Maclear felt unmoored.
Her father had recently fallen ill and she suddenly found herself a little lost. In the midst of this crisis, she met a musician who loved birds. When he watched birds and began to photograph them, his worries dissipated. Curious, she began to accompany him on his urban birdwatching expeditions and witnessed the…
Explore
-
Books like Birds Art Life Death
- Book lists with this book
- Why do people like this book?
Topics
-
Creativity
-
Creative thinking
-
Birdwatching
-
Birds
Genres
- Coming soon!
-
Preview
-
Bookshop.org
-
Amazon
By
Diana Donald,
Why this book?
Victorian women were at the forefront of Britain’s animal protection movement. We owe our compassionate reflex to their hard-fought battles against cruelty. Women founded the Battersea Dogs’ Home, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and the many groups that opposed vivisection.
They lobbied for better treatment of animals, both through practical action (demonstrations, gruesome shop window displays, pamphleteering) and through writing, such as Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. Yet their male opponents dismissed their efforts as sentimental and hysterical. For an overview of women’s struggles under the patriarchy (eg, patronisingly menial tasks dished out by a male RSPCA council) this is a fascinating read.
By
Diana Donald,
Why should I read it?
1
author picked
Women Against Cruelty
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
What is this book about?
Women against cruelty is the first book to explore women’s leading role in animal protection in nineteenth-century Britain, drawing on rich archival sources. Women founded bodies such as the Battersea Dogs’ Home, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and various groups that opposed vivisection. They energetically promoted better treatment of animals, both through practical action and through their writings, such as Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty.
Yet their efforts were frequently belittled by opponents, or decried as typifying female ‘sentimentality’ and hysteria. Only the development of feminism in the later Victorian period enabled women to show that spontaneous fellow-feeling…
Explore
-
Books like Women Against Cruelty
- Book lists with this book
- Why do people like this book?
Topics
-
Activists
Genres
- Coming soon!
-
Preview
-
Bookshop.org
-
Amazon
By
Katharine Norbury,
Why this book?
‘What would happen,’ Norbury writes in her introduction to this anthology, ‘if I simply missed out the 50 percent of the population whose voices have been credited with shaping this particular cultural form?’ (ie, the ‘lone enraptured male,’ as writer Kathleen Jamie once memorably put it). The answer is a compulsively readable and constantly surprising anthology: a magpie curation of glittering treasures.
One of the many things I love about this timely book is its arrangement by alphabetical order. So you have contemporary nature blogger Nic Wilson next to Virginia Woolf, and Monica Ali rubbing shoulders with Elizabeth von Armin – and Enid Blyton next to Tessa Boase. This feels oddly apt: the writer who got me reading. Her entry illustrates Norbury’s inspired eye for what counts as ‘nature writing’: here, Philip mansplains a slow-worm to silly Dinah.
By
Katharine Norbury,
Why should I read it?
1
author picked
Women on Nature
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
What is this book about?
What would happen, I wondered, if I simply missed out the fifty per cent of the population whose voices have been credited with shaping this particular ‘cultural norm’. If I coppiced the woodland, so to speak, and allowed the light to shine down to the forest floor and illuminate countless saplings now that a gap has opened in the canopy.
There has, in recent years, been an explosion of writing about place, landscape and the natural world. But within this, women’s voices have remained in the minority.
This anthology gathers the voices of women from the fourteenth to the twenty-first…
Explore
-
Books like Women on Nature
- Book lists with this book
- Why do people like this book?
Topics
-
Nature
Genres
- Coming soon!
-
Preview
-
Bookshop.org
-
Amazon
By
Nicola Chester,
Why this book?
An unusually honest, rural memoir by the RSPB’s longest-serving female columnist. Chester’s writing has a lovely elasticity, dancing between wonder, introspection, and anger as she moves from the particular to the universal. I learned a lot about how Britain’s countryside is managed. I also enjoyed her more eccentric impulses, such as lying down in the snow on the edge of a field one night, just to see what might happen.
She belongs to the disappearing English rural working class, and is intent on handing this baton to her three children. Chester also explores the familiar tension between wanting to write and being needed at home. The heady ecstasy of time carved out alone, in nature. The scrabble to earn a precarious living, and the insecurities of occupying a tied cottage. The idea of ‘home’ lies at the heart of this fierce, beautifully written, immersive book about one’s place within the landscape.
By
Nicola Chester,
Why should I read it?
1
author picked
On Gallows Down
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
What is this book about?
Shortlisted for the Richard Jeffries Award 2021
[A] wonderfully accurate, powerful and funny memoir of rural life Stephen Moss
It’s ever so good. Political, passionate & personal. Robert Macfarlane (via Twitter)
I couldn’t put it down! A must read! Dara McAnulty (via Twitter), author of The Diary of a Young Naturalist
An evocative and inspiring memoir Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground and winner of Costa Novel Award 2021
Part nature writing, part memoir, On Gallows Down is an essential, unforgettable read for fans of Helen Macdonald, Melissa Harrison and Isabella Tree.
On Gallows Down is a powerful, personal story…
Explore
-
Books like On Gallows Down
- Book lists with this book
- Why do people like this book?
Topics
-
Activists
-
Nature
-
Birds
Genres
- Coming soon!
-
Preview
-
Bookshop.org
-
Amazon
By
Hannah Bourne-Taylor,
Why this book?
Here’s how an intense, almost obsessive focus on wildlife can bring solace from chaos and alienation. Young bird-lover Hannah Bourne-Taylor moves to Ghana as a ‘trailing spouse,’ and it’s the fauna that keeps her going as she struggles to rebuild her identity. Two stray dogs leap into her life; a pangolin needs saving from someone’s dinner table. But it’s the act of saving a swift and a mannikin finch, nurturing and releasing the birds back into the wild, that provides the key to this closely observed, touching story.
At first, the finch doesn’t want to re-wild – and Hannah realizes with a shock that she’s humanized it. Explores interesting dilemmas about intervening on nature’s behalf, and whether one act of compassion can really make a difference. A book full of hope.
By
Hannah Bourne-Taylor,
Why should I read it?
1
author picked
Fledgling
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
What is this book about?
Read the powerful account of one woman’s fight to reshape her identity through connection with nature when all normality has fallen away.
When lifelong bird-lover Hannah Bourne-Taylor moved with her husband to Ghana seven years ago she couldn’t have anticipated how her life would be forever changed by her unexpected encounters with nature and the subsequent bonds she formed.
Plucked from the comfort and predictability of her life before, Hannah struggled to establish herself in her new environment, striving to belong in the rural grasslands far away from home.
In this challenging situation, she was forced to turn inwards and…
Explore
-
Books like Fledgling
- Book lists with this book
- Why do people like this book?
Topics
-
Birds
-
Nature
-
Rewilding
-
Ghana
Genres
- Coming soon!
-
Preview
-
Bookshop.org
-
Amazon
5 book lists we think you will like!
The best books about the history of British birds
The best books on women’s experiences in WW1
The best books about life in Tudor times
The best books to understand Anglo-Saxon England
The best books on sidelights on British politics
Interested in
activists,
birds,
and
nature?
7,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
activists,
birds,
and
nature.
Activists
Explore 21 books about activists
Birds
Explore 129 books about birds
Nature
Explore 110 books about nature
And, 3 books we think you will enjoy!
We think you will like
Birds Britannica,
The Feather Thief,
and
The Making of a Legionnaire
if you like this list.
Bird women in Slavic mythology | BATIK and I
I really like the image of female birds, which were invented by the Slavs in ancient times. These images are excellent heroes of drawings on fabric, so we will accompany the informational part with illustrations of batik.
So, the first bird. Alkonost – the heroine of Slavic legends and one of the incarnations of the sun god Dazhdbog (or the god Khors), a bird-symbol of joy. Often she is called a relative of other mythological birds, which, however, usually embody completely different deities, and one cannot call them relatives.
Alkonost is depicted as a bird with a human female head . Her singing is “sweet as love itself.” The heart of anyone who hears her singing is filled with joy, happiness, all the brightest feelings.
Author: Alena Klimenko.
Usually this wonderful bird lives in the world of Rule, on a tree with precious fruits, which is guarded by dragon Ladon .
In our world, Yav, she descends only in winter to calm snow storms. During the winter solstice, according to myths, Alkonost lays seven eggs in the oceans. At this time, all the seas are absolutely calm – you can not be afraid of storms. Then the eggs float back, and Alkonost returns to Prav.
Author: Svetlana Soldatova.
Some legends mention that people tried to get magical eggs, and those who managed to get this priceless artifact disappeared from our world without a trace.
Author: Vera Shepilova.
Author: Nadezhda (designsilk)
In this case, Alkonost can act as a messenger of the gods, and eggs – as the covenants that he brings to people.
Author: Elena Razina.
Another notable bird woman is Sirin . She was the incarnation of Veles, moreover, his dark incarnation. Sirin has a human body to the waist, and the feathers on the underside are dark blue or purple.
Author: Olga Pastukhova.
A feature of Sirin is that she can move freely between Prav, Navu and Yavu .
It is also worth noting her charming singing, which even the gods hear. In addition to a beautiful voice, Sirin has the ability to control the elements.
Author: Elena Shafranskaya.
Sirin was born in Iria, analogue of Paradise among the Slavs, which explains all her supernatural abilities.
Author: Schepina Ekaterina.
Despite the origin, the Slavs perceived Sirin as a messenger of misfortune . Seeing her or hearing her singing was considered an extremely bad sign. However, sometimes Sirin, like Alkonost, acted as a messenger of the gods, sent to warn a person about something, and sometimes to convey the command of the inhabitants of the Rule directly.
Author: Tatiana (Taruta)
Author: Vera Shepilova.
There is another incarnation of the deity of wisdom, Veles , in the mythology of our ancestors – bird Gamayun . Sometimes, for her talkativeness, she is called things a bird, and sometimes a bird-talker.
To meet this magical bird is a uniquely positive event in your life.
See also:
Images of women by Olga Danilyuk: http://irenabatik.ru/mastera-batika/intervyu-s-olgoj-danilyuk.html
Gamayun looks like a large, powerful bird with bright colorful plumage and a female head and chest. And sometimes there are references to her ability to turn into a girl completely.
Author: Nadezhda Chursina.
Gamayun belongs to Yavi – our world, and is the antipode of the Sirin bird. Gamayun, being the incarnation of Veles, has a huge amount of knowledge and can often tell worthy people the solution to a problem, or teach them to turn to the gods in such a way as to be heard, or even reveal some secret. Gamayun also had the ability to predict the future , but only to those who were able to accept it.
Gamayun lives on the island of Buyan located in the Alatyr Sea , located, as already mentioned, in the world of Yavi.
Sometimes she visits other worlds – Rule and Glory, only she does not stay there for a long time. Her travels around the worlds are determined by a single purpose – like other bird women, she is the messenger of the gods and often conveys their messages to mortals.
This bird has the image of an intermediary connecting the human world and the gods, as well as the people of the real previous generations. It was always perceived by the Slavs in an exclusively positive way, and therefore Gamayun is always a positive character , without her participation in Slavic myths, virtually no feat was accomplished.
Bird Woman (James Willard Schultz)
Buy offline
The price on the site may differ from the price in the chain stores. The appearance of the book may differ from the image on
site.
The price on the site may differ from the price in the chain stores. The appearance of the book may differ from the image on
site.
American writers
A new volume of the collected works of James Willard Schultz (1859-1947) continues the publication of a series of stories dedicated to the adventures of an old friend of the writer, pioneer of the Far West, trapper and fur trader Hugh Monroe (Rising Wolf) and his friends, both white and Indian. In these stories, the Rising Wolf no longer appears as the main character, but as a narrator or comrade of the main characters. He undertakes a long winter journey to the “earth house peoples”, discovers the extraordinary story of an Indian woman who saved the famous research expedition of Lewis and Clark, participates in the rivalry of trading companies on the Upper Missouri. Together with Monroe, the reader becomes a witness to the fights of warriors of hostile tribes, learns the amazing features of bison hunting, is present at the sacred ceremonies of the Indians of the Great Plains, gets acquainted with the strange customs of the steppe tribes. Two of the stories included in the book are published in Russian for the first time.
The book also contains documentary appendices on Sacajawea’s biography and the history of the Upper Missouri fur trade. The design used illustrations, the author of which is the son of the writer, Lone Wolf (Hart Merriam Schultz), a famous artist and sculptor.
Description
Features
American writers
A new volume of the collected works of James Willard Schultz (1859-1947) continues the publication of a series of stories dedicated to the adventures of an old friend of the writer, pioneer of the Far West, trapper and fur trader Hugh Monroe (Rising Wolf) and his friends, both white and Indian. In these stories, the Rising Wolf no longer appears as the main character, but as a narrator or comrade of the main characters. He undertakes a long winter journey to the “earth house peoples”, discovers the extraordinary story of an Indian woman who saved the famous research expedition of Lewis and Clark, participates in the rivalry of trading companies on the Upper Missouri.
Together with Monroe, the reader becomes a witness to the fights of warriors of hostile tribes, learns the amazing features of bison hunting, is present at the sacred ceremonies of the Indians of the Great Plains, gets acquainted with the strange customs of the steppe tribes. Two of the stories included in the book are published in Russian for the first time. The book also contains documentary appendices on Sacajawea’s biography and the history of the Upper Missouri fur trade. The design used illustrations, the author of which is the son of the writer, Lone Wolf (Hart Merriam Schultz), a famous artist and sculptor.
Prestige Book
There are no reviews for this product yet
Be the first to share your opinion
How to get bonuses for reviewing this product
1
Make an order in the online store
2
Write a detailed review of 300 characters only for what you bought
3
Wait for the review to be posted.
If he is among the top ten, you will receive 30 Favorite Shopper Card bonuses. Can write
unlimited number of reviews for different purchases – we will add bonuses for each one published in
top ten.
Bonus Rules
If he is among the top ten, you will receive 30 Favorite Shopper Card bonuses. Can write
unlimited number of reviews for different purchases – we will add bonuses for each one published in
top ten.
Bonus Rules
The book “Woman bird” is available in the online store “Chitay-gorod” at an attractive price.
If you are in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don or any
another region of Russia, you can place an order for a book
James Willard Schultz
“Woman bird” and choose a convenient way to receive it: pickup, delivery by courier or sending
mail.