TTW Photo:
Mark Babushkin |
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|  An Unspoken Hunger:
Stories from the Field
(1994)
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An Unspoken Hunger:
Stories from the Field
Pantheon
1994. Hardcover.
ISBN: 0-67943-244-2
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| An Unspoken Hunger:
Stories from the Field
Vintage
August, 1995. Trade Paperback.
ISBN: 0-67975-256-0
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ABOUT THIS BOOK
Williams weaves her observations in the naturalist field and her
personal experience--as a woman, a Westerner, and a Mormon--into a
resonant manifesto on behalf of the landscapes she loves, making clear
as well that, through our disregard of this world, we have lost an
essential connection to our deepest selves.
"These are rich meditations [with] strength and power.... From an examination of women's earliest mythic
connections to the earth to the accounts of recent protests against nuclear testing, the idea of women as
intermediary between earth and human conduct is interwoven throughout.... This is all good stuff, the kind
of continuous exploration and adventure that makes a life into a pilgrimage."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Terry Tempest Williams makes it clear that we lose an essential part of ourselves when we neglect the earth, but this
collection of essays does not offer a soapbox delivery of tired manifestoes; rather, it uses poetic and insightful
inspiration to urge the reader to become aware, assess the damage, and begin to heal broken bonds. In her essay
"Yellowstone: The Erotics of Place," Williams writes, "There is no defense against an open heart and a supple body
in dialogue with wildness. Internal strength is an absorption of the external landscape. We are informed by beauty,
raw and sensual. Through an erotics of place our sensitivity becomes our sensibility."
A native of Utah, Williams is best known for her reflections on the American West, but the first essay in this book
takes us to Africa's Serengeti Plain: "Morning comes quickly near the equator. There is little delineation of dawn.
On the Serengeti, it is either day or night. A peculiar lull occurs just before sunrise. The world is cool and still.
Gradually, the sun climbs the ladder of clouds until the sky mirrors the nacreous hues of abalone."
Through these readings you'll discover that Williams's "unspoken hunger" is for us to live lives with greater intent
and accountability and in greater intimacy with the natural world."
--Kathryn True
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Related Links: |
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Talk on Unspoken Hunger, at UC Davis, May, 1994.
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Excerpt from An Unspoken Hunger, entitled "In Cahoots with Coyote" on the One World Magazine site, beautifully illustrated online with images from Georgia O'Keefe.
- Excerpt from Unspoken Hunger, entitled "Undressing the Bear", in the ATJT REVIEW Vol. 2, No. 1, Fall 1996,
News & Comment From A Traveling Jewish Theatre.
- Review of Unspoken Hunger.
- Article about the fight for the TTW's involvedment in the fight to preserve the American West, from Mother Jones magazine.
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