Guest blog - re Identity in Deaf Culture

My cousin David was kind enough to read my last blog and provide his feedback.  i found it so helpful and insightful I wanted to dedicate a page to it - and here it is.  For context, read my blog on Identify in Deaf and Black culture first.  Enjoy!

Hello Katie, here are my comments…

Oliver Sacks did something similar, he was a trained neurologist who did not start out with much experience or knowledge of deaf culture.  Nevertheless he took the time and care to research it and came out with a fairly decent book, Seeing Voices.  I saw him on the book tour when he came to UC Berkeley actually (this was 1989 or ‘90.)

I have a coworker who is black and deaf, but he does not identify as Black.  He identifies as Deaf.  He grew up in Berkeley which of course is multi-ethnic and went to the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley (and graduated from it four years after it moved to Fremont in 1980.)  Growing up, he was always around other Deaf, using American Sign language almost exclusively (meaning little or no use of speech or lipreading), and racial identity was only a very minor part of it.  He says, “I don’t know how to be Black.”

All Deaf and hard-of-hearing live within the Hearing world whether they like it or not, and it’s a constant struggle in so many ways.  Where we have struggles with racism, so we have what is being called Audism in the struggles that Deaf persons face in the world.  Audism is the belief that hearing loss is an unmitigated curse that must be eradicated at all costs, with no acknowledgment of the contributions of American Sign Language and Deaf Culture.  Or the acknowledgement is there but with a patronizing attitude.

Tom Holcomb confronts this in his very fine book (I attended one of his book tour events, too, he’s a fabulous speaker) called Introduction to American Deaf Culture.  You can peek in both of these books on Amazon.

Your essay focuses on the positive aspect that is Choice, but I felt something should be said about the factors in our lives that influence, redirect, even oppress our choices.

Hope this helps, dear cousin!

David

Identity in Deaf and Black Culture

I have been pondering issues of identity in Deaf culture as I conduct research on my current novel, featuring a few hard of hearing characters and at least one Deaf character.  As I think about issues of identity in Deaf culture, I have compared it in my mind to issues of identity in Black culture. Although I am not Black, I am married to a Black man and our three sons are all different shades of brown.  So I have witnessed their identity choices - do they consider themselves Black and part of the Black community?  We were part of a Black church for the first 20 years of our marriage -- first a very large African American church in Jamaica, Queens, Allen A.M.E. Church, then a small, mostly African American church in East Elmhurst, Queens.  In those churches our sons were part of Black religious culture, celebrating Black History Month, absorbing values and music and food of Black culture.  For the last 10  years we have been part of a multi-ethnic church in Jersey City, New Jersey. But we have lived in diverse neighborhoods since our first son was born, and all three of them have always enjoyed a mix of friends from all kinds of backgrounds and cultures.

Our sons are different shades of brown and have made choices concerning their identity.  We have told them growing up that they are both Black and White.  They don't have to choose. They are both.  Our society might want them to be in one category  - the U.S. Census only recently allowed people to choose more than one ethnic background.  But most forms require people to choose one ethnicity, which is absurd as so many people have a mixed background. Light-skinned Blacks can either identify closely with the Black community, consider themselves Black or "mixed," or "pass" as white.

Clara Lee Fisher (woman) is a
descendant of
Madison Hemings.

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings had six children, four of whom survived infancy.  Three of those children chose to "pass" as white -- daughter Harriet, and sons Bevery and Eston -- and one chose to identify as Black - Madison.  They were all quite light-skinned.  They chose their identity - they considered themselves part of either the White community or the Black community.


I think something similar happens in the Deaf and hard of hearing community.  Those who are hard of hearing either identify strongly with the Deaf community, and choose to be a part of that culture, or they choose to assimilate into the larger hearing community.  Just as dark-skinned blacks cannot choose to identify as White, those who are profoundly Deaf cannot choose to identify as hearing.  But for the light-skinned Blacks, and for the hard of hearing, there is a choice to be made.  Sometimes parents force that choice early on, but in adulthood, every hard of hearing person can choose to identify closely with the Deaf community, or to assimiliate into the larger hearing culture.

Yesterday I observed a ballet rehearsal and the instructor is hard of hearing.  She told me that when she was young a nun told her mother that she should be enrolled in a Deaf school.  Her mother refused, so this instructor was raised in a mainstream school and did not grow up learning with and associating with Deaf children.  She assimilated into the hearing community instead of the Deaf community.  As an adult, she functions within the realm of the hearing community and feels most at home there.  Others in her position feel equally at home in the Deaf community.  Choices.

This is my theory.  I would love to hear feedback from those of you in the Black and Deaf community who have more experience and knowledge than I.

What do whales have to do with writing?

You might think this a strange title for a blog post, or for any piece of writing.  Indeed, what do whales have to do with writing? According to Herman Melville, brilliant author of Moby Dick, quite a lot.  After reading the introduction to Moby Dick (a book I asked my youngest son to get me for Christmas - one of the classics I have never read) I almost felt I didn't need to read the book. The introduction, written by David Herd, Professor at the University of Kent at Canterbury, was so brilliant, so insightful, I had to think about it for awhile, to absorb it -- like a great sentence in a good book.

Melville was erudite, and he compared the act of writing to two things -- to reading, and to whales.  I'll start with his comparison to reading. Melville "reads to write" as Professor Herd states. I often tell my students "good readers make good writers." This is very true, but it seems to be more obvious in a book like Moby Dick, where Melville begins his book with "extracts," quotes about whales from many varied books: the bible, Shakespeare, Milton and whaling songs. He has read voraciously, and thus writes out of an abudance of material. The books he has read are fodder for his writing.

In an early scene in the book, Ishmael receives a gift of money from Queequeg, and he uses the money to pay for his own and Queequeg's room and board.  As Professor Herd describes it, this transaction is "a lovely sequence of events, Ishmael receiving a gift, passing it on, and in the process turning it into something else..." and this "hints at the way Melville circulates learning: receiving words from another writer and passing them on, although not before he has turned them into something else. Which makes the book a bit like a library."  Good books are like that. They do not stand alone, but stand on the backs of all the books the author has read.

The second allusion is more like a simile.  Writing is like a whale's spout.  How?  Whales dive into the deep and gather up sustenance, only to surface and spout out water, or vapor. What they produce is not what they took in, but something new.  Just as a writer absorbs all he or she has read, and spouts out someting new - a novel, a poem, a song. This wholly unique way of thinking about writing enthralls me. What do you think?