Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams, "The Clan of One-Breasted Women"

Terry Tempest Williams (1955- ) was born in Nevada, close enough to Utah to see the Great Salt Lake. She earned both a B.A. (1979) and an M.S. (1984) from the University of Utah. Besides being a writer, she has worked as a photographer, teacher, and as a naturalist at the Utah Museum of Natural History. Her books include Leap (2000), a spiritual examination of a Bosch painting, and the collection of essays and poems Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert (2001). Williams's work also appears in periodicals such as Whole Earth, New England Review, and the Los Angeles Times. Among her awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction. "The Clan of One-Breasted Women" examines the terrible toll nuclear testing has taken upon a particular group of people. This essay was first published in Northern Lights in 1990 and later collected in Williams's influential book Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (1991).

CONTENT

1. Which Mormon dietary restrictions does the author mention?
2. What does the author see in the desert in 1957?
3. What symptoms of radiation poisoning does the author list?
4. Briefly explain the legal concept of sovereign immunity.
5. What does the author mean by saying that "living in Utah may be the greatest hazard of them all"?
6. Explain the title of this essay.
7. How did some of the author's beliefs about Mormon culture change over time?

STRATEGY AND STYLE

1. In paragraph thirty-eight, the author refers to herself and her family as "virtual uninhabitants." How does her wordplay here underline her feelings about the government and nuclear testing?
2. "The Clan of One-Breasted Women" is a narration about a part of one specific woman's life, but it has widespread significance. What are some of the ways Williams makes this more than just the story of a single individual? Where in the essay did you go to support your answer?
3. Williams uses dialogue throughout much of this piece. How could she have conveyed the information it presents differently? How would the essay change? What would it lose?
4. As the author describes her journey to protest the testing in Mercury, Nevada, she refers to the group of protestors as "winged messengers." In mythology Mercury is also sometimes referred to as the "messenger of the gods." Tie in these ideas with the author's view of her protest.
5. What is the role of description in this piece? Where does the author make appeals to the senses? Support your answer with specifics from the text.

1. Have you ever engaged in a protest? If so, what was its nature? If not, why not? How can you relate your experience to this reading?
2. How much is your body image related to your self-identity? Imagine your body changing suddenly and drastically. How would you react? How much would the circumstances of this change matter?

SUGGESTIONS FOR SUSTAINED WRITING

1. Write a comparison/contrast essay about the topic of civil disobedience, using this author's work and that of either Henry David Thoreau or Martin Luther King Jr. Consider these questions: What prompted the two author's actions? What did they do? What happened to them?
2. In Greek mythology, the Amazons were a tribe of fierce women warriors who cut off one breast in order to become better archers. More generally, an amazon has come to mean a strong woman. Incorporate these ideas into an essay that examines different images of women found in this reading.

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

Do some research into the nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site from 1991, when this piece was written, until the present day. What changes, if any, are evident over this time? If there have been changes, who has been primarily responsible for them? If there haven't, what should be done?

WEB CONNECTION

Are you thinking about doing research on the topic of breast cancer, but not sure how to limit such a subject? A visit to the Breast Cancer Resources Directory from CancerIndex.org will be well worth your time. It has background information about the disease, and links to hundreds of resources including to breast cancer organizations, information for patients, and sites about screening and self-examination.

LINKS

Biographical

Coyote Clan, a site devoted to Williams's life and work, has some background information about the author, photos, a biography, and lots of related links. It's a great place to start your online research.

This testimony she gave before the Senate Subcommittee on Forest & Public Lands Management about public land in Utah contains a good bit of biographical information about Williams.

Bibliographical

Ready for some of this author's work in etext? This is an excerpt from Williams's book Red. Do you like etext better or hard copy better? Explain the differences between the two.

The NPR radio program Insight & Outlook conducted this interview, "The Politics of Place," with Williams in 1995. Click here to read the transcript.

Cultural

Interested in putting Williams's work into the broader cultural context of feminist literature? This page of literary resources about feminism and women's literature will help you do just that.

How about a classic essay that examines our relationship to nature? Here's Henry David Thoreau's essay "Walking." Do you like using etext in your schoolwork? What can you do with electronic texts that's hard to do using hard copy?

Interested in doing some research about environmental issues, but not sure where to begin? This page from the Open Directory Project has the topic subdivided into about two dozen different aspects, and will give you plenty of good ideas.