Birdsong (novel) Birdsong (novel) Birdsong is a 1993 war novel and family saga by the English author Sebastian Faulks. It is Faulks' fourth novel. The plot follows two main characters living at different times: the first is Stephen Wraysford, a British soldier on the front line in Amiens during the First World War, and the second is his granddaughter, Elizabeth Benson, whose 1970s plotline follows her attempts to recover an understanding of Stephen's experience of the war. Faulks developed the novel to bring more public awareness to the experience of war remembered by WWI veterans. Most critics found this effort successful, commenting
Mia Birdsong to connect with the characters in these stories. There were books like Nancy Drew and Judy Blume that drew on gender invisibility, but not race. When Birdsong was a senior in high school, she read Richard Wright's "Black Boy". Though the book wasn't assigned for students to read, Birdsong chose it for her AP English class. Another influence was Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back""." With the birth of her first child in 2005, Birdsong wanted to ensure that her daughter saw herself reflected in the world around her. She wanted her daughter to