An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field [Paperback]

Terry Tempest Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 29, 1995

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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

From Publishers Weekly

Naturalist Williams's collection of essays mixes environmental activism, a passion for the landscape of her native Utah and a special concern with the role of women in the environmental cause.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books Ed edition (August 29, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679752560
• ISBN-13: 978-0679752561
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,777 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

She is the award-winning author of Leap, An Unspoken Hunger, Refuge & most recently Red - A Desert Reader. She lives in Castle Valley, Utah.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Erotics of Place, August 21, 2002

By 

Zinta Aistars "Writer & Editor" (Portage, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field (Paperback)

As the title of one of Terry Tempest Williams' essays states... this collection of immersions into spirit and place are "The Erotics of Place." That is, not just a bodily immersion into her subject, but one of totality. Williams accomplishes that sinking into her well-worded ideas that leaves only the tips of her hair floating on the surface, a faint rippling of the water where she stepped in, and nothing more - she is submerged. And that is a thing of quality.

The essays in this short collection touch on lives of people as well as life force of place. Williams writes about Georgia O'Keefe in "In Cahoots with Coyote" with evident love for the woman, the artist, the landscape: "What O'Keefe saw was what O'Keefe felt - in her own bones. Her brush strokes remind us again and again, nothing is as it appears: roads that seem to stand in the air like charmed snakes; a pelvis bone that becomes a gateway to the sky; another that is rendered like an angel; and 'music translated into something for the eye.'" The essay concludes with Williams, O'Keefe, and coyotes in the canyons of southern Utah howling in harmony.

Williams writes a eulogy for Edward Abbey, another spirit polished by desert sand. She sees Abbey as the leader of a growing Clan, a clan of human coyotes reclaiming their land, "...individuals who are quietly subversive on behalf of the land. And they are infiltrating our neighborhoods in the most respectable ways, with their long, bushy tails tucked discreetly inside their pants or beneath their skirts... not easily identified, but there are clues. You can see it in their eyes. They are joyful and they are fierce. They can cry louder and laugh harder than anyone on the planet..."

This is that total immersion Williams renders so well. Her people essays blend seamlessly with her place essays; they are the same, as they should be, she reminds us, the same. "We call its name," she writes of the earth around her, "and the land calls back."

Williams makes political statements in her work. It is her coyote howl to call together an awareness of the destruction of land all around us. She addresses nuclear testing not only as a naturalist, but as a woman born in a family riddled with breast and ovarian cancer. She addresses conservation as a necessity for continued life on earth, not merely as a question of quality of life. Her call is not militant - it is one of lyrical love for the preservation of the gift we have been given, the natural world that sustains us.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A taste of salt air and sage, November 27, 2007

By 

Cecil Bothwell "Author of "Whale Falls: A... (Asheville, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field (Paperback)

This collection of essays about the soul and ecology of the Great Basin by a brilliant naturalist/essayist/memoirist wanders from Utah to Alaska, then Africa and the halls of Congress. Williams has a wild streak, a touch of dangerousness -- a dozen years after my first reading of the terse title piece involving an avocado, the imagery still evokes a squirm. While still in her thirties Williams became the matriarch of her family thanks in great measure to our ignorant dabbling with atomic weaponry. A death sentence is said to clear the mind, and nuclear "downwinder" status is surely one source of the clarity of vision here expressed. This woman's passion for the living desert, imbued with a scholarly naturalist's understanding, together with her respect for the wisdom and magic of our human and animal past emerges in a delicious mix of science and ghost dance. Part biography, part journal, part testimony, part eulogy -- a taste of salt air and sage which leaves this reader hungry for more. (See my reviews of Williams' REFUGE, Pantheon Books, 1991, and LEAP, Pantheon Books, 2000.)

5.0 out of 5 stars An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field, September 3, 2011

By 

MizN - See all my reviews

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This review is from: An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field (Paperback)

Another insightful collection of thoughts and stories by Terry Tempest Williams. Terry's ability to transport you to the location where she is in each story makes you feel, smell, taste, and live the experience as if you were present. This book will be used as a meditative reference guide for years to come.