H Is For Hawk

Helen MacDonald (b. 1970) is the author of the memoir H Is for Hawk. She is an English writer, academic, and naturalist. MacDonald is nonbinary and uses she/they pronouns. MacDonald grew up in Surrey, England, and studied English at Cambridge University. Throughout the memoir, she wrestles for control of herself and her world as she grieves for the loss of her father. In this sense, every characterization of other people and animals described in this memoir is just a facet of who she was at the time of writing. This includes her hawk, Mabel. We see the world through her eyes, and in so doing, we piece together the many facets of her personality. This is not the record of the rigorously plotted life of a hero, but one in which describes an extraordinary moment in an ordinary life. In fact, this transcription of the author’s life over her observed phenomenon is among the tendencies the author attempts to interrogate in H Is for Hawk; the more she associates Mabel with her declining mental state, the more mistakes she makes as her caretaker. In the same way, by allowing her father to go, and by not making him a mere aspect of her security and mental well-being, she comes to better terms with who he was in life, and with herself, as well.