ARTICULATE

A deaf writer explores her relationship with language.

At the age of 23, author Kolb became “the first signing deaf person” to be awarded a Rhodes scholarship. Although she revels in this victory, she is disappointed with the media’s framing of her story as a triumph over her disability. She writes, “Despite. This is the word that jars me most. As if excellence and fulfillment are somehow at odds with living in a deaf body.” Throughout her life, Kolb resists the idea that her deafness is an obstacle rather than an integral part of her humanity. As a child, she works hard at speech therapy, not because she wants to fit into the hearing world, but because she craves control. She writes, “If I spoke well, then those words would forever be my own. I would prove myself to be the success I wanted to be. I would never again need anyone or anything else to speak for me.” Navigating landscapes ranging from deaf summer camp to college life before and after receiving a cochlear implant transforms Kolb’s sense of self and her relationship with her deafness. Being deaf, she writes, is about learning that “there was always a way to sort out what someone else had meant,” treating the body as “the text,” and understanding that “speech isn’t the real measure of one’s intimacy with English, nor is English the real measure of one’s intimacy with language.” Kolb masterfully uses her life story as a springboard for reframing deafness and, more broadly, disability from an assets approach. Her lyrical prose and trenchant analysis upend non-deaf people’s limited conceptions of language, exposing the limitations of a world defined by hearing.

An exquisite memoir about deafness that brilliantly shatters our ideas about language.