“I Only Know One Me”. Terry Tempest Williams’ Eco-Writing from a Mormon Perspective

Abstract

Terry Tempest Williams was raised in a family whose roots go deep into the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon Church. In her writing, Williams negotiates her own identity. In that negotiation, both Nature and faith play important roles to understand her engagement into the art of writing and her own definition of self. Williams is able to articulate a personal but significant dialogue with Nature, one in which Nature speaks to her in pregnant ways. That intimate conversation is also fundamental to understand her reflections on faith. Eventually, her contemplation of her relationship with the Divine operates also as a useful system of enlightenment and discovery to fathom her connection to the natural space. Thus, she seems to establish a bond between the spiritual and the material that is visible in how she defines herself through words which are also selected and braided by way of a sophisticated style combining ethereal and corporeal angles.