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SHADOWLANDS: IMPLICATIONS OF WRITING A MEMOIR OF … · PERSONAL IMPACTS OF WRITING MY MEMOIR:...
Transcript of SHADOWLANDS: IMPLICATIONS OF WRITING A MEMOIR OF … · PERSONAL IMPACTS OF WRITING MY MEMOIR:...
SHADOWLANDS: IMPLICATIONS OF
WRITING A MEMOIR OF DEAFNESS
Donna McDonald PhD
Griffith University, Australia
IDENTITY
‘The sense of our own identity is fluid and tolerant,
whereas our sense of the identity of others is always
more fixed and quite often edges towards caricature.
We know within ourselves that we can be twenty
different persons in a single day and that the attempt to
explain our personality is doomed to become a falsehood
after only a few words . . .
And yet . . . works of literature, novels and biographies
depend for their aesthetic success precisely on this
insensitive ability to simplify, to describe, to draw lines
around another person and say, “This is she” or “This is
he.”’
A.N. Wilson. Incline Our Hearts
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A LIFETIME OF PEOPLE ASKING ME
QUESTIONS ABOUT MY DEAFNESS
“Your deafness, it must have a big impact on your
life?”
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MY SEARCH TO UNDERSTAND
MY DEAF SELF
I read many memoirs by other deaf writers and novels with deaf characters (most of which are written by hearing writers).
I faced the task of:
composing my own memoir of deafness,
in a fresh way,
to disrupt historically persistent perceptions of deafness and what it means to be deaf.
In this presentation, I describe how and why I tackled this challenge, and its impact on my sense of identity.
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MY FEARS
Sprang from my experiences and observations:
many hearing people treat and talk crudely
about deaf people
I might also be treated and talked about in
such a way, with devastating consequences:
lessened career prospects, compromised
friendships, and conditional love.
perhaps I was a lesser person in some way? . . .
because here I was, routinely inconveniencing
so many people because I couldn’t hear
properly and didn’t say every word properly.
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SHAKING OFF MY FEARS
Admitting this fear to myself, let alone to anyone
else, was hard.
BUT
I realised my silence was acting as a brake on my
ability to live authentically, and
as a brake on other people’s understanding of the
variety of possibilities for deaf people’s lives.
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DEFINING MY ‘SELF’
In my memoir, Art of Being Deaf, I remembered,
described, and interpreted my experiences by
answering such questions as:
Who am I in relation to my deafness?
What does my being deaf mean in relation to
other people?
What additional tasks in developing my sense
of self did I have to take on board (or avoid)
because I am different from other people?
(Corker, 1996, p.4).
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ANXIETIES
“Lately, the deaf subject is also anxious. She is
anxious about her identity, anxious about her
place, anxious too about her anxiety. Attempting to
cope with her anxiety, she tries to remember what
some philosophers and great authors have told her
about her subjectivity, her anxiety, and the placing
and questioning of her very identity” (Brueggeman,
2009, p.1).
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MY APPROACH
I was born deaf, and so I did not experience that
fracture between “hearing” and “no hearing”
described so vividly by other memoirists who
became deaf through illness or trauma.
My memoir is not a “triumph over adversity”
story or about conquering battles, but about
inviting the reader into my world to see what it
feels and sounds like, eg my:
external experiences of deafness
inner sense of myself as “being deaf”
struggles with the general questions of life
that confront all of us. 9
A THEME: SEPARATING THE CHILD’S WILL
FROM THE PARENT’S WILL
I saw how my early life had been shaped by the
exertion of my mother’s will so that I gained the
necessary competencies to participate fully as a
deaf woman in the hearing world.
I also accepted that I had been a largely
unreflective but usually compliant accomplice to
my mother’s will.
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ANOTHER THEME: IMPORTANCE OF FINDING
OTHER VOICES
Absence of childhood deaf friends + absence of
deaf mentor . . .
This is why reading:
historical and contemporary novels with deaf
characters
and
memoirs by deaf writers
were such useful guides for my reflections on my
deaf life and deaf self.
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LEARNING FROM OTHER VOICES
Memoirists: Helen Keller; David Wright; Frances
Warfield; Henry Kisor; Bernard Bragg; Bainy
Cyrus; Hannah Merker; Christopher Heuer;
Joseph Valente and many others.
Novelists: TC Boyle (Talk Talk), Frances Itani
(Deafening), Vikram Seth (An Equal Music),
Philip Zazaove (Four Days in Michigan).
Anthologies: Sayers, E. E. ed. Outcasts and
Angels
and so on. 12
A THIRD THEME: IDENTITY BUILDS ON
CONNECTIONS
We must all take our sense of connectedness from
where we can best find it.
For some deaf people, it is within their own Deaf
community.
For others such as myself—those oral-deaf
people, in the shadowlands, scattered across the
hearing world—such a sense of connectedness
can be buried or lost.
Accessing the heritage of deaf memoirs,
biographies, and life narratives was enormously
helpful to me . . . the hand of mentoring reached
down to me across the span of history.
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FOURTH THEME: DEAF PEOPLE ARE NOT THE
FAILED ATTEMPTS TO BE HEARING.
My deafness is more than the backdrop to my
sense of self; it is the context in which I am
located.
But I do not like being regarded by others as a
“deaf woman” as if I hold no other qualities.
And I do not like it when people try to “take
away” my deafness with comments such as “You
seem just like a hearing person.”
My private, non-negotiable insistence on being
understood by others in a layered, textured,
multi-dimensional way has restrained me from
publicly staking out my identity as a “deaf
woman.”
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LOVE
The depiction of romantic love in the lives
of people with a disability still seems to be
startling to others.
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BORDERS IN CHILDHOOD
In my childhood, my deafness was contained
within many borders:
My entire extended family was hearing and so
served as a stronghold against any encroachment
by the deaf community . . . warding off the threat
that being deaf might overtake my life.
Many suburbs and a wide wending river lay
between my childhood home and the school for
deaf children and the homes of my deaf friends.
Even the private girls’ school I attended (after
five years at the Deaf School) was protected by
that same river and high stone walls.
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BORDERS (LESS APPARENT) IN ADULTHOOD
An invisible membrane, like porous cling-
wrap, grew between my public deaf-in-
the-hearing-world persona and my private
deaf self.
This membrane is permanent and so is
the duality of my public “hearing-deaf”
self and private deaf self.
The dominance of either the public or
private self depends on the circumstances
in which I find myself. 17
WHY TELLING OUR STORIES MATTERS
How do others understand us if our stories about
deafness and what it means to be deaf are
missing from what they read?
How do hearing parents of deaf children
navigate the course of their young children’s
lives if they do not have an array of life-stories
from deaf adults from which to learn?
And just as importantly . . .
How do we understand ourselves if we do not
see our lives authentically portrayed in books,
films and other media? 18
PERSONAL IMPACTS OF WRITING MY
MEMOIR: RECONCILIATION & CLARITY
A shift has occurred in me, and it shows in the
significant changes that have taken place and are
continuing to take place in my life.
By writing my memoir of deafness, I reconciled
my childhood deaf self with my adult “hearing-
deaf” persona. The two selves have merged as
one.
I have also learned that talking with others
about my deafness has anchored me more
strongly to my home, my family, and to my
friendships.
My final destination has been clarity.
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REFERENCES Boyle, T. Coraghessan. Talk Talk. New York: Viking, 2006
Corker, Mairian. Deaf Transitions: Images and Origins of Deaf Families, Deaf Communities, and Deaf Identities. London and Bristol, Pennsylvania: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1996.
Brueggemann, Brenda Jo. Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places. New York and London. New York University Press, 2009.
Couser, G.Thomas. “Signs of Life: Deafness and Personal Narrative.” Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1997
Cyrus, Bainy, E. Katz, C. Cheyney and F. Parsons. Deaf Women’s Lives: Three Self-Portraits. Washington D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2006
Heuer, Christopher Jon. BUG: Deaf Identity and Internal Revolution. Washington D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2007
Itani, Frances. Deafening. New York: Grove Press, 2003
Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1903.
Kisor, Henry. What’s That Pig Outdoors?: A Memoir Of Deafness. New York: Hill and Wang, 1990
Merker, Hannah. Listening: Ways of hearing in a silent world. Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press, 2000
Seth, Vikram. An Equal Music. London: Phoenix House, 1999.
Warfield, Frances. Cotton in My Ears. New York: Viking Press.
Wright, David. Deafness: an autobiography. New York: Stein and Day, 1969
Zazaove, Philip. Four Days in Michigan. Dallas, Texas: Durban House Press, 2009.
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SELECTION OF MY PUBLICATIONS ON DEAF IDENTITY
McDonald, Donna. Art of Being Deaf: a memoir. Gallaudet University Press (in press: May 2014)
---,“Stories as Mirrors: Encounters with Deaf Heroes and Heroines.” Deaf Epistemologies. Eds. Paul, P.V & Moores, D.F. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press. 2012
---, “Not Silent, Invisible: Literature’s Chance Encounters with Deaf Heroes and Heroines.” American Annals of the Deaf, 154.5 (Winter 2010): 463-470. Print.
---, “The Silence of Sounds.” Literature and Sensation. Eds. Uhlmann, Anthony, Helen Groth, Paul Sheehan, Stephen McLaren, 173-183. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. Print.
---, “Shattering the Hearing Wall.” M/C Journal-able. 11. 3 (July 2008). http://journal.media-culture.org.au/
---“I Hear With My Eyes.” Griffith Review.11 (Autumn 2006). Print. Reprinted: A Revealed Life. Australian Writers and Their Journeys in Memoir. Ed. Julianne Schulz. Sydney: ABC Books and Griffith Review, 2007. Print. Reprinted: Link: disability magazine. 17.4 (October 2008).
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