Allison Unfiltered

What it isn't...

I first met Louise Stern when I was a freshman at the student newspaper.   She was the features editor, responsible for being in tune with the scenesters in and outside of Gallaudet.  I was a seventeen-year-old dork suffering from serious culture shock.  I wore baggy all-purpose T-shirts and jeans because I didn't know any better; she wore peasant tops and distressed booties, her hair artfully arranged in a dark, mysterious flip with all the casual nonchalance I assigned to an upperclassman.  The only art history major in her consort, she was too sophisticated and worldly and too far out of my league for me to ever have a conversation with her, though we attended the same meetings and knew the same people.

Fast-forward just over a decade. Now a London resident, Louise Stern has published a collection of short stories, Chattering, and founded her own contemporary art magazine for children, Maurice.  She's also currently at work on both a novel and a play.  I'm stuck over here in the DC area, still recovering from the aftermath of my divorce and battling with the final requirements of my MFA degree and constantly forgetting to call myself a "writer." 

Color me jealous.

Or so I thought until I caught a "reading performance" Louise gave at Gallaudet December 1 with her creative collaborator (and ASL interpreter) Oliver Pouliot.

Together, the duo performed a story from her collection that I would later find out was called "The Wild Man."  By "performed," I mean it was more theatrical than the other author readings I've attended (and I've attended my share -- Meg Wolitzer and T.C. Boyle, just to name-drop a couple).  It was dark except for the front of the room, where track lighting lit up a platform.  A photograph of a beached canoe on a tropical island served as the backdrop.  Louise and Oliver entered stage right and took up their positions and began the story in ASL.  The room went quiet as the story unfolded.

Louise narrated in ASL, with Oliver breaking in at moments with gestures I would call having roots in ASL but universal in their implied meaning.  During the Q and A session that followed, I would find out that Oliver performed internal narration moments, and Louise performed the rest of her story.  When they were done performing, they walked offstage, leaving us contemplating the empty space they'd left behind.

Hands waved in the air.  It was nice.

So here's the thing that shamed me into silence until now: I understood absolutely none of the reading.

Nothing. I got some images, sure. I remember something about a black and white spotted rabbit, and something about three green huts, and I know there was a guy named Victor in the story, but I can't tell you what any of those has to do with anything.  As the performance continued, I figured maybe it was one of those instances of "theatrical ASL," where the actors' lines get so stylized that people like me -- someone who isn't a native, yes, but proficient enough in the language that my students sigh in relief when they realize I'm one of them -- are hopelessly lost. 

But then the Q and A session began and people started asking Louise questions about the story. 

"When Victor saw the boat..." started one.  I didn't get the rest of the question because I was utterly freaking out, scrambling to remember: boat?  What boat?  Ah, they must've read the book before today. 

"Sorry, I haven't read the book yet, but... So he threw down the picture of the girlfriend, right? So I was wondering..." Shit... umm, what?  There was a picture of a girlfriend?! 

Then the discussion took an interesting turn -- people seemed to want to ask questions about Louise's choices -- to include deaf English, to choose a story that wasn't about a deaf character at all for her performance at Gallaudet -- and about how she exemplified what a deaf writer could be.

And this isn't a verbatim quote, but I inferred some frustration on Louise's part as she responded that she didn't necessarily want to write deaf stories for the sake of being deaf, and that if people wanted to question why she wrote things the way she did, they could, but she didn't have to justify herself.

It's a bit of bravado I admire -- so many times I've whined to told people who read my work-in-progress and tell me I need to include more deaf stuff, "but I don't want to!  I'm not just deaf!  It's boring to me.  I just want to write my story!"

But Louise did say something about writing her stories that I found interesting.  In English, on paper, the words all have the same sort of level of physical presence.  As she turned to her collaboration with Oliver as a way to bring those words alive in the three-dimensional world of ASL, she found it exciting.  More than once, she used the phrase "push boundaries" -- that darling of artists everywhere. 

That's also something she said that stopped my jealousy cold: she's grown up in a deaf family using ASL, so to see her written work coming back to signs? Exciting! 

I grew up with a hearing family using spoken and written and cued English.  When it's my turn to breathe life into my words in front of an audience, so far it still looks like my best option is to co-opt a language I learned later in life and rely on a second person to convey my original words to the audience.  Not exciting.  The opposite of exciting; it feels like a betrayal to my own work.

Since the reading performance, I've bought my own copy of Chattering (which was the first time I knew what the story she performed was called).  And experienced sheer relief as the images I saw Louise sign resolved themselves into a narrative I was more comfortable with, securely right there on the page in English.  (And I'm happy to report she does do some novel things with the form, so ahead and add Chattering to your to-read list!)

I've blogged before about my frustration with the idea of author readings and what I'll do when it's my turn to present my own work.  Seeing Louise, a published writer and accomplished artist, in person and still experiencing her own frustrations even as she finds her outlet, stirred up my own ambivalence.  I wish Louise well, though I'll be jealous of her no more.  She's carving her own niche out, and I've yet to make a dent in mine, but our works are and will continue to be different.

Ah, well.  Oliver said something in the Q and A session that I think describes quite well how I feel about my own writing and the eventual presentation(s) I'll make: sometimes it's easier to describe something by what it isn't than what it is.

'Cause I'm a real catch, after all.

This was the view on a me-date in Montpelier I took today. 

It's the first me-date I've taken in years.  And damn, it felt good.  I got to Vermont under my own power, rented my first car ever.  When my advisor asked for an update on my personal life during a group meeting -- and I always feel he's looking for red flags that might disrupt my writing -- I was able to say, "Y'know, I'm doing really, really good."  And I meant it.

For the first time I don't really have drama in my life.  I have little life stuff to worry about, things with my daughter, worrying about getting my manuscript right, projects at work that I need to finish.  But they're all first-world bourgie concerns. 

For the first time after taking the reins of my own life I'm able to take a breath, look around, and think, damn, this grown-up thing ain't half-bad.

Why Luddites Make Lousy Friends.

After he Psst-pssts at me, I look up from my Kindle.

"What are you doing?"

"What's it look like I'm doing?!"

"You're staring at some kind of machine."

"...Oh, Jesus."

 

 

A prolonged stare elicits--

"What?!"

"What's the machine telling you?"

"Oh, shut up."

 

 

"Psst.  Psst."

"Now what?"

"You should blog that.  It's funny.  Write about that and blog it."

"Blog it yourself."

"Oh, no, no.  No, no, oh, noooo.  ... Machines can't be trusted."

Is the Good Deaf Writer a myth?

In the June 2011 issue of Vanity Fair, there is an essay, "Unspoken Truths," not advertised on the cover, written by Christopher Hitchens.  I read it with interest, not just because I know a friend currently reading his memoir, Hitch-22, but also because that friend described the book as essentially his swan song.  Hitchens has esophageal cancer.  His voice is forever changed -- gone. 

In "Unspoken Truth" Hitchens ruminates on the links between talking and writing; it's a beautifully-written essay.  But then I came across this sentence that sent me to a whole 'nother intellectual plane:

"Indeed, I don't know of any really good writer who was deaf, either."

I don't know what it says about me that I began to debate him mentally. 

First point of contention: any good deaf writer? 

I've spent the last several months telling anyone who'll listen that I've spent the better part of my time in my MFA program reading books from deaf writers whenever I could, especially memoirs.  I found that a large portion of the books by deaf authors I read aren't very well-crafted. 

Josh Swiller's The Unheard, for me, stands heads and shoulders above the rest.  I heartily recommend Madan Vashishta's Deaf in Delhi as well, but I always warn: for his story, not for his wordsmithing. I've heard good things about Ann Clare LeZotte's T4, but put it down once I saw it was written in verse (sorry, poets).  She's apparently quite lauded in certain writer's circles.

Otherwise, I struggle to come up with titles worthy of reading.  They plod.  They self-pity.  They're insular.  They're inaccessible.  They bumble over their own words.  They magnify either disability or sensory difference over some thinly-written story. 

I wish more deaf people would get themselves published (and not self-published -- unlike the success stories some rare writers have had, one only needs to look at the well-intentioned but sadly-executed fiascos of Mindfield and Gather the Weeds to know that's a path to be avoided).  We can do it, I know we can!  Maybe I just haven't read enough.

So Hitchen's declaration that good writing and deaf writers aren't friends?  Ouch. What deaf writing has he been reading?

But then I move on to my next point: good writing and neither deafness nor deafhood do not necessarily correlate.  It has more to do with a commitment to the work, the craft itself of writing.  This I argue, specifically because immediately following the above sentence, Hitchens writes:

"How could one ever come, even with the clever signage of the good Abbe de l'Epee, to appreciate the miniscule twinges and ecstasies of nuance that the well-tuned voice imparts?"

Humph.  So Hitchens has read up a bit on deaf history.  Yay for him.  But I think he's making a huge jump here from the mellifluous acts of vocalizing to the pleasure of a finely-wrought sentence. (And belying his own ignorance about a language not his own, by the way.)

Annie Dillard once wrote in her "Notes for Young Writers," and I once giggled when I read it too:

"Learn punctuation; it is your little drum set, one of the few tools you have to signal the reader where the beats and emphases go... Punctuation is not like musical notation; it doesn't indicate the length of pauses, but instead signifies logical relations."

I love that she uses music as her metaphor, hinting at the meaningful spatial characteristics of language that is found even (or maybe I should say especially) among visual communicators -- people like us deafies. 

I have always hated the explanation of commas as pauses.  "If you come across a comma, take a breath, and then continue reading," I've been told.  That's good advice, if you're orating.  But breathing and pausing aren't essential to reading, not any more than they are to sitting on the toilet.  Understanding and appreciating and savoring the production at hand?  Most definitely. And yes, that applies to both beautiful prose and turdpiles.

I once attended a workshop with other writers (mostly of memoir) where our facilitator told us to write generative poems based on our favorite lines out of a central poem she furnished.  When we were done, we were to do a vocal popcorn-like exercise where one person would begin reading the central poem out loud, and then others would interrupt with lines from their individual poems.  I was wearing a hearing aid, so I could hear the effect -- different voices crossing the room, louder and softer, rumbling and sharp, gentle and giggly.  I could sense the change in the meaning of people's poetry -- a reverie on the color blue transitioned into an erotic reading of a hand on a head, which then slid into a jangling locomotive limerick about joints and hammers and cogs and keys.

I sat by, a silent observer.  The instructor had asked me if I wanted to hand off my poem to one of my interpreters to read in my stead.  I had nodded and smiled at her benevolence, and then sat there, my poem resolutely in my lap.  And then the workshop was over.  The other participants left, congratulating each other on their wonderful-sounding work.  I left, rolling my eyes.

After one other similar read-aloud exercise the same day, I made some snarky comment about writers' obsession with hearing their words through the air to one of my interpreters.  "What is the big deal?!" I asked.  I'm pretty sure I appended it with a few four-letter words too.

"Oh, but if you could hear it, you'd get it," she said.

"I know," I whimpered.  She hadn't backed me up, hadn't stood with me in solidarity against the belief that sound somehow made words holier.  She and her ears had betrayed me, the sole deaf writer in my program.

My problem, perhaps, is that words spoken aloud do have weight.  Spoken word competitors, speechwriters, poet laureates, and my own teachers tell me this.  I have no evidence with which to argue otherwise.

But I have plenty to suggest good writing doesn't absolutely require a receptive ear.  It needs a receptive mind.  I just finished reading Octavia E. Butler's Fledgling this weekend.  She is a guru of the simple, elegant, compelling narrative. 

Upon finding her father dead, the protagonist narrates:

"Iosif was dead.  I'd hardly begun to know him, and he was dead.  I had begun to like him, and he was dead."

Repetitive, like poetry.  Spartan, like invisible writing should be.  And wrenching, as sudden grief should be.

Guess what? I didn't have my hearing aid on when I read that.

In the paragraph Hitchens writes, just before the line that damns all writers like me to a career of perceived mediocrity, he says:

"The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed.  Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn't precisely one of the things that engage you, often at first without your noticing it.  A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful."

He's agreeing with me.  He's misunderstood about deafness as an impediment to writing, but he and I agree about writing that is satisfying. 

I leave Hitchens to lament the loss of his voice.  That loss and the nonexistent loss of deaf writing's merit do not correlate, I conclude.  Hitchens is free to yearn for his speech back, and I wish him the best. 

Me? I'm going to stay right here, happily cursing blank pages on my laptop.  For, to paraphrase a 19th century British poet who wrote stoically standing against circumstances life handed him, both perceived and actual:

I am the captain of my prose.

My literary luddite tendencies reveal themselves.

Yesterday I tried out a friend's Kindle.  It was in a nifty leather cover and when I opened it up there was a screensaver sort of thingy up on the screen, with the very helpful instruction: "Slide and release the power switch to turn on." 

So I touched the screen, thinking I'd unlock it like I've seen others do on their iPhones and other devices.  Slid my finger across it.  Nothing happened.

Tried again, pressing a bit harder with my finger pad.  Nada.

Hm.  Maybe I was sliding in the wrong direction.  Touched left to right this time.

Saw something of the corner of my eye, looked up, and my dear friend -- who I'm going to call Kindle Snob from now -- on was busting out.  Post-giggle, he said, "THAT's funny!" Wow.  Helpful.  Very helpful.

Good thing my momsie sent this earlier today, or my day's worth of self-esteem would have been completely shot.  (Can always count on mama to save the day.)  In an article talking about old technology to keep or get rid of, this was the BOOKS comment:

BOOKS -- Keep them (with one exception). Yes, e-readers are amazing, and yes, they will probably become a more dominant reading platform over time, but consider this about a book: It has a terrific, high-resolution display. It is pretty durable; you could get it a little wet and all would not be lost. It has tremendous battery life. It is often inexpensive enough that, if you misplaced it, you would not be too upset. You can even borrow them free at sites called libraries.

But there is one area where printed matter is going to give way to digital content: cookbooks. Martha Stewart Makes Cookies a $5 app for the iPad, is the wave of the future. Every recipe has a photo of the dish (something far too expensive for many printed cookbooks).

Complicated procedures can be explained by an embedded video. When something needs to be timed, there’s a digital timer built right into the recipe. You can e-mail yourself the ingredients list to take to the grocery store. The app does what cookbooks cannot, providing a better version of everything that came before it.

Now all Martha has to do is make a decorative splashguard for a tablet and you will be all set.

P.S. I figured out how to open the Kindle all on my own. (Why, hello there, actual physical switch!) Boo-yah.

And congrats go to...

...Sir Humpsalot and Jennifer (random winner), who both coincidentally had comments that made my day.  I gotta say -- taking advantage of my love for pervy crass humor?  Oooh, yeah.

Sir Humpsalot said:

Dearest Alli, I'm quite fond of your presence. I even created a drink and named it after you. Problem is that I liked it so much I got shitfaced and now I don't remember what was in it.

And Jennifer said:

You should take the "preggers" comment as a compliment, I hear the more meat somebody has on her/himself is a good lover in bed. Apparently it helps with the rhythm of love making.. (one word hint: bouncing)

Congrats again, guys.  Your books will be on your way soon.  And for the rest of you -- never fear.  I have another free book giveaway coming up!

Last Call: Leave a comment, win a book!

I'll be choosing the two winners after midnight tonight.  C'mon.  You know you want to win.  Can't promise you Tiger Blood, but Oatmeal never fails to amuse me.

Remember, I'm giving two copies away.  One to the elf that makes me the most giddy, and one to someone who gets picked at random.  Subjective/objective winners both, yay!

Click here to go to the giveaway blog and leave a comment.  See ya tomorrow morning!

GIVEAWAY: Look who's feeling lucky!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

And just because I'm feeling so generous (and because I'm half-Irish and feel the need to mark the day), I'm giving two lucky elves a copy of The Oatmeal's new bestseller, 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth (and Other Useful Guides).

Yeah.  I should totally be awarded Leprechaun of the Decade.  Just because I'm all nice and stuff, even though the sweetest thing anyone's said to me in the last week was, "haha! Your tummy looks like there's a baby in there!" (Thanks a lot, kid.)

To win, leave a comment. 

Whoever leaves the comment that redeems the aforementioned comment the best wins one copy.  I also believe in random luck, so the second winner will be picked by some fancy schmancy computer randomizer.

I'll give you ten days -- one comment per person, please.  Your e-mail address is always hidden when you comment, but make sure it's valid, 'cause that's what I'll be using to contact you to confirm delivery info and stuff.  Okay, you have until midnight EST, March 27, 2011.  Aaaaannnd... GO.

Thus begins my foray into comment-whoredom.  Because dude, you elves aren't the only ones who deserve to get lucky.  *hair-flip*

Mothers who find themselves again

Got surprised the other day when I clicked on the yahoo mainpage and found one of my Goddard teacher's faces looking back at me.  Reiko Rizzuto has an essay up on Salon, "Why I left my children," which I absolutely adore.  Go read.  I commandeth thee.

For school, I also read Maria Housden's memoir Unraveled: the True Story of a Woman Who Dared to Become a Different Kind of Mother, which I didn't much like, but related to anyway because of her search for the self she'd lost in marriage and childbirth.

It's funny... It's the 21st century, so I'd like to think we're evolving as a society past the medieval urge to marry and procreate at any expense, but still...

I am constantly surprised to read about and meet mothers like this -- mothers who decide to opt out of the 50's mindset that being a parent means overwhelming emotional and menial labor and -- more importantly -- the loss of yourself.  It's particularly telling that these women are getting published for doing what men have done for centuries: separate their selves from the parent roles they play. 

Like Reiko and Maria's, my marriage did not survive. 

But my relationship with my daughter did.

I am no longer the harried housewife worrying about food, daily routines, and the emotional wellbeing of my daughter at the expense of myself.  Instead, she and I have actual conversations.  Since moving into my own place, my daughter and I have talked about love, travel, languages, relationships, friendships, marriage, sex, politics, future plans, feelings.  She has become a whole human being in my eyes, something she wasn't before.

A few months ago I caught L'il Red telling one of her friends, "My mommy's sweet and nice to me.  She doesn't say no."  She's said it several more times since then.

Well, I do say no (I'm her mom, not a doormat), but I'd like to think Leah's saying that sort of thing 'cause she's noticed I've mellowed out; I'm not so hung up on the "supposed to"s and "have to"s of wifehood and motherhood anymore.  I'm more interested in the daily realities of our lives and individuality as two girls together.

And by the way, I am entirely convinced that the reason I am able to see her this way is because I decided to do the same thing for myself.

Whitehead applies the Heisenberg Principle to a marginalized group -- with a firefly.

Colson Whitehead's partially autobiographic novel Sag Harbor is both fun and bittersweet not just for the 80's references from the viewpoint of a black middle-class teenager (Cosby Show fans beware) but for the thought-provoking gems Whitehead inserts throughout. 

This one, a quick and short paragraph slipped sneakily into Benji's planned ambush of his opponents in a nighttime BB gun battle, threw me into a mental vortex of how I might write a similar meditation on how deaf people are perceived:

A firefly blinked into existence, drew half a word in the air.  Then gone.  A black bug secret in the night.  Such a strange little guy.  It materialized, visible to human eyes for brief moments, and then it disappeared.  But it got its name from its fake time, people time, when in fact most of its business went on when people couldn't see it.  Its true life was invisible to us but we called it firefly after its fractions.  Knowable and fixed for a few seconds, sharing a short segment of its message before it continued on its real mission, unknowable in its true self and course, outside of reach.  It was a bad name because it was incomplete -- both parts were true, the bright and the dark, the one we could see and the other one we couldn't.  It was both.