Terry Tempest Williams

Copperfield's Books: Mosaic as metaphor provides the underlying thread of your new work Finding Beauty in a Broken World. From chapel ceilings to prairie dog villages to a Rwandan memorial this stark statement stands out: “a mosaic is a conversation between what is broken.” Can you elaborate on that?

Terry Tempest Williams: Mosaic is not just an art form, but a form of integration, a way of taking that which is broken and creating something whole. As my teacher Luciana in Ravenna says, “Mosaic is a way to organize the world…and it is created out of community.” Whether it is the bejeweled ceilings of Byzantia or the ecological mosaic of prairie dogs in the sagebrush steppes of Utah or the mosaics created literally out of the rubble of war in a Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, mosaic is a way to take that which is broken and create something whole. It is more than the art of assemblage, it is the work of daring contemplation that inspires action.

CB: Your writing poignantly and poetically bears witness to social/environmental horrors & truths. How are deep listening and conscientious storytelling integral to this process?

TTW: To bear witness is not a passive act, but can lead us to a shift in consciousness which ultimately, leads us to a different way of being in the world. If we change the way we see, we change the way we act. The degree of our awareness is the degree of our aliveness. Much of this book, I realized after I had written it, is about presence, about listening, and then choosing to respond together in the name of community—each in our own way, each in our time with the gifts that are ours.

CB: Your narrative expands and contracts to include the personal/community/global experience. As a writer, how do you navigate this continuum and still craft a coherent whole?

TTW: It is the attempt, always the attempt. I am constantly aware as a writer, how words fail me. It was important to me with this book, Finding Beauty in a Broken World to create a mosaic out of words, no chapters, no titles or headings, just a continuum, like life—following each word to where it may lead us. The spaces between paragraphs, call them interstices—the spaces between glass tesserae became the pause between thoughts, supporting the blocks of text in this literary construction. My task as a writer is to pay attention to form, to structure, to make certain that it both mirrors and holds the ideas in place.

It was also important for me to make the connection, controversial as it may be, that the extermination of a species and the extermination of a people are predicated on the same impulses: prejudice, cruelty, ignorance, and arrogance—surrounding issues of power and justice. I wanted to create a narrative that asks us to consider the interrelatedness of all things. If we cannot begin to see the world whole, even holy, then I fear we will continue to create more fragmentation, compartmentalization, and isolation which is the seedbed of war. We are “other”—no separation. We seem to forget this. How do we create a remembering on the page and in the world? These ideas are at the heart of Finding Beauty.

CB: Your field notes from observing one of the last wild, protected Utah prairie dog villages appears in the book. In this section, the reader watches your journey as you gear down from the speed of technological life into the day in and day out of sitting atop a windy tower to track prairie dogs. You move slowly from “panic and boredom” and into “awe & wonder.” Would you say more about this process?

TTW: I so appreciate you understanding this. When I gave the book to my father, he said, “Terry, the section on the prairie dogs is so boring, no one will finish it and if they do, the rest of the book is such a downer, they will be sorry they did.” You got it exactly right. I wanted to create for the reader the same experience that I had watching prairie dogs. The first few days I thought I would die from boredom – and then suddenly, the world came alive, the prairie dog town became dynamic with minute by minute drama. In truth, I realized it was not the prairie dogs who had changed, but my own perceptions. I had finally slowed down enough from my harried and fragmented life to be able to see the life before me, subtle and dramatic, at once. Again, it is about being present with our eyes wide open.

CB: Lily Yeh, creator of Barefoot Artists, invited you to Rwanda as the group’s scribe during the creation of the genocide memorial in the village of Rugerero. Initially, you said no, but then, said yes because you felt your “spiritual evolution depended on it.” What did this mean for you and what has been revealed since your work in Rwanda?

TTW: My brother had just passed away from lymphoma. I was broken. My family was broken. I didn’t want to go to a country so familiar with death. I didn’t want to face my own complicity as an American in turning my back on the genocide. I was afraid. I did not feel I was strong enough to face a war-torn community. I said no and then, I said yes. I knew my own humanity depended on it. And it was true. Rwanda turned me inside out and upside down. All of us who went experienced a profound transformation. There was nothing in my imagination that could accommodate this kind of horror and grief—but what I saw in the strength of the Rwandans was their extraordinary resiliency. Rwanda is a country engaged in reconstruction and restoration, one person at a time. It is deeply moving, deeply humbling, and inspiring. I realized and continue to contemplate how violence is not something outside us, but within us—as Lily Yeh says, “capable of erupting at any moment.” On one hand, we can create great acts of compassion and on the other hand, terrible acts of cruelty. How do we bring these two hands together in prayer?

CB: As the scribe, you note the women of Rwanda don’t tell their stories—it is the “word not spoken,” and I couldn’t help but think of the following quote, “The…gaps between the tesserae [the pieces from which mosaics are formed] speak their own language.” How might these untold stories silently speak?

TTW: The word not spoken in Rwanda is rape. You see it in the eyes of the women. You see it in the hunger of the children who are orphaned. This is the unspoken story. In the Rwandan genocide, it was the first time that rape was used as an instrument of war. The genocidaires infected with AIDS consciously raped women knowing this would be an unfolding death through generations.

CB: Can you say more about Barefoot Artists and the Rwanda Healing Project? How can people learn more and become more involved?

TTW: The Rwandan Healing Project is ongoing in the Genocide Survivors Village of Rugerero located near Gisenyi in the Great Lakes region on the border of the Congo. Readers can go to www.barefootartists.org to find out more information. Art truly has been the spark for social change as painted murals created by the children in the Village have led to other projects that are creating sustainable development for the community. A sunflower oil cooperative has been established (fields of sunflowers border the Village in petaled beauty) along with a sewing industry where women are making clothes and bags that are generating an income. A project to transform corn cobs into charcoal is also underway.

On October 17, President Paul Kagame visited the Village with six other ministers. The Villagers felt seen as they shared the fruits of their labors with their revered leader. As Jean Bosco said, “The people of Rugerero are not invisible anymore.”

Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find, together.

Copperfield's Books would like to thank Terry Tempest Williams for this noble and valuable work. Again, for more information on the Rwandan Healing Project go to www.barefootartists.org.