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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