Split into fifty-four chapters with each exuding its exquisiteness, When Women Were Birds explores the power of voice and also silence. Through poetry, personal accounts and creation stories, Williams meditates on the natural world, womanhood, and family. The lyrical examination of nature and voice relates ornithological knowledge with finding your voice and the human experience. Offering a glimpse into the Mormon female relationships within the family structure, Williams expounds on the importance of empowerment. The blank journals signify love, in that the mother withheld her voice—even in death—in order to give Williams hers.
In her final days, Williams’ mother informs her of a couple of journals she has set aside for her to read after she passes. However, Williams would later find out the journals are empty, which takes her on an introspective journey of what it means. It is tradition for Mormon women to bequeath journals; therefore, the lack of words in them is also love and power in itself. Power exists in both withholding and sharing words with others; thereby, it is a display of love on her mother’s part. Moreover, the emptiness is a form of cross-examination in which Williams has to offer answers in turn conveying her voice. This takes the author back in time when she had a speech impediment as a child that inspired her to find a voice through poetry. All things in nature become the allegory to her journey of womanhood as she likens birds to the feminine energy and voice.
A strong emphasis is placed on what it means to have a voice as a woman, blending in lessons from the natural world that tap into the feminist political ecology. Kirkus Reviews wrote, “She draws intelligent connections between varied subjects, with emphasis on voice and silence and how the two richly inform one’s inner life. Over the course of several decades, the ability “to speak through our vulnerability with strength” became a hard-won realization.”
