Outcasts and Angels: The New Anthology of Deaf Characters in Literature

408 Pages·2012·2.24 MB·English

by  Edna Edith Sayers (ed.)

Outcasts and Angels
Outcasts and Angels
The New Anthology of
Deaf Characters in Literature
Edited by Edna Edith Sayers
Gallaudet University Press
Washington, DC
Gallaudet University Press
Washington, DC 20002
http://gupress.gallaudet.edu
© 2012 by Gallaudet University All rights reserved. Published 2012
Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Outcasts and
angels : the new anthology of deaf characters in literature / edited by Edna Edith Sayers.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56368-539-2 (hard cover: alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-56368-540-8 (e-book) 1. Deaf in
literature. 2. People with disabilities in literature. 3. Characters and characteristics in literature. I. Sayers,
Edna Edith.
PN56.5.H35O98 2012
808.8’035272–dc23
2012022979
Cover photograph of the Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, Alabama, from the George F. Landegger Collection
of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs
Division. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith.
Cover design by Dennis Anderson The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984.
For Will Sayers
Contents
Introduction
Daniel Defoe From The Life and Adventures
England, 1729 of Mr. Duncan Campbell
Charlotte Elizabeth From Letter VIII: The Dumb Boy,
England, 1841 in Personal Recollections
Henry William Bishop Jerry and Clarinda
USA, 1868
Auguste Villiers de L’Isle- The Unknown
Adam
France, 1883
Ambrose Bierce Chickamauga
USA, 1891
Annie Trumbull Slosson Clavis
USA, 1896
Richard Dehan Under the Electrics: A Show-Lady
England, 1915 Is Eloquent
Viola Meynell We Were Just Saying
England, 1924
Gianna Manzini The Wife of the Deaf Man
Italy, 1929
Howard T. Hofsteater Dummy
USA, 1930
Kim Tongni Portrait of a Shaman
Korea, 1936
Isak Dinesen Karomenya, from Out of Africa
Denmark, 1937
Juozas Grušas Fairer Than the Sun
Lithuania, 1937
Weldon Kees I Should Worry
USA, 1939
George P. Elliott Miss Cudahy of Stowes Landing
USA, 1954
Flannery O’Connor The Life You Save May Be Your Own
USA, 1955
Gordon Woodward The Edge of Sound
Canada, 1955
Nadine Gordimer Charmed Lives
Republic of South Africa,
1956
Warren Kliewer The Sibyl
USA, 1964
Joanne Greenberg And Sarah Laughed
USA, 1967
Rasheed A. Gbadamosi The Sexton’s Deaf Son
Nigeria, 1969
Joanne Greenberg Like a Native
USA, 1985
Douglas Bullard From Chapter 3 of Islay
USA, 1986
Richard Umans Speech
USA, 1986
Carole Glickfeld My Father’s Darling
USA, 1989
Sheila Kohler Miracles in America
USA/Republic
of South Africa, 1990
Pauline Melville A Quarrelsome Man
England/Guyana, 1990
England/Guyana, 1990
Florence V. Mayberry The Secret
USA, 1992
Karawynn Long Of Silence and Slow Time
USA, 1995
Morris Smith Stone Deaf
USA, 1997
Marlin Barton Into Silence
USA, 2009
Julian Barnes The Limner
England, 2009
Reading Deaf Characters
Works Cited
Permissions and Credits
Introduction
In the 1970s, when the academic discipline of women’s studies was in its
infancy, the investigation of female literary characters in novels and stories by
authors of either sex was already giving way to the study of work by women
writers. In Deaf studies, the focus on deaf characters in literature began to give
way to the study of deaf writers in the 1990s. Disciplines devoted to the study of
historically silenced groups evolve, and that is as it should be. Yet the study of
literary characters still has a great deal to tell us about how such groups were
seen within any given society because writers both reflect public views and
contribute to shaping them. In fact, most Americans today will encounter a deaf
person only in fiction, film, or television drama, not in real life.
An extremely well-read hearing friend told me he knew of only one deaf
character in literature: Joel Mayes in Eudora Welty’s “First Love,” a 1942 story
about a deaf boy who witnesses Aaron Burr making history. It is not a far-
fetched guess that many teachers of literature could not even come up with that
one title. Deaf characters are in fact rare, and for two very good reasons. One is
that deaf people are rare in real life. In the United States, for example, about one-
tenth of one percent of the population is born deaf, not much more than a quarter
million souls. Even when one adds to that statistic people who became deaf as
children, the numbers are small, and considering how signing deaf people tend to
congregate (for example, in Rochester, New York, or Silver Spring, Maryland),
even these small numbers are not to be encountered in every community today.
The second reason has to do with how literature works—stories are told in
dialogue between characters. With the rare exception of stories that have only
one human character and must be told through the character’s thoughts, a story’s
plot develops when characters interact with one another in language. This means
that characters have to share a language, a seemingly obvious point that seems
not to have occurred to some writers who have embarked on stories with a deaf
character.1 However, Wilkie Collins, creator of the deaf heroine Madonna in his
novel Hide and Seek, understood the problem in 1854: I do not know that any
attempt has yet been made in English fiction to draw the character of a
“DeafMute,” simply and exactly after nature—or, in other words, to exhibit the