There were seven of us at Joan's home the last Tuesday of August: Marylib, Paige, Sheri, Libby, Maddy, Mary, and Joan. Joan read an end passage about a strong tie to the earth, the land, putting one's ears to the ground to hear it. And we all agreed that this was Terry's tie to her true self, that at one with nature.
This was a kind of mystery book, a detective story, where there were no real answers why Terry's mother had so many journals and left them blank. There was only a living in the present for her daughter, to then make sense of why her mother left the journals blank. Joan likened her mother to a caged bird, but then Paige and Sheri mentioned that leaving them blank was a kind of rebellion. Right from the start the book was provocative and interesting. Page by page it became a raw, honest portrait of the author herself as a woman trying to find her voice in a changing world. Sheri mentioned that writers do have an ego for others to hear what they say, and Terry Tempest Williams certainly has a writer's voice, but that her mother didn't. Perhaps this was a book about knowing our own truth. Joan mentioned that she has written journals but that she would not want others to read them. Libby mentioned that she buys journals and fills them half way and then rips pages out years later, and then buys more. So there is a fear of wanting to reveal one's private world. But a desire to express oneself. Blank journals did express something.
There were so many different vignettes, 54 to be exact, of trying to solve the mystery of these journals. Paige brought up the one where she is a teacher in a school where the principal tears down what she is trying to teach. This was persistence by Terry to keep on for 5 years while someone was trying to blot out her voice. Sheri brought up the incident in the woods, where a young blond man asked Terry to hike and then created a frightening situation by his bizarre behavior. And we all asked what it meant that she didn't report it, that she was afraid her voice would not be believed. That she had such fear of this guy that she was silenced. And she regretted that she didn't speak up to keep it from happening to others.
Maddy told us an interesting story about Phil working for a camp outside of Salt Lake and eventually the people there listened to a member of the church rather than Phil who was an expert. Which led us to talk about the Mormon religion for a while.
Sheri loved the part about the opera and the story of the shadow, and that Terry went on and on for a few pages, which was unlike other sections of the book. Perhaps, Paige mentioned, that this was the crux of the book, that there is a shadow that we are all chasing and trying to find out what it means.
Libby mentioned that she thought everyone finds something different in the book and that is its value, that all women are wanting to have their own voice in their own way. Paige felt the book spoke to her. Libby loved the part about the Chinese secret language, that women through time have had their own language, written like bird's feet, that no one but women can understand. We all decided that it is very OK to have secrets as a woman. Terry even mentions that marriage can never be all for a woman, and that secrets can propel a woman to find her own voice.
This book has lots of surprises but that is what life is all about, and in those surprises written by Terry there is truth and wisdom. Ultimately we must all know our own truth.
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