Deaf American Literature: From Carnival to the Canon

Chapter 5: Literary Night: The Restorative Power of Comedic and Grotesque Literature

Chapter 5 Literary Night: The Restorative Power of Comedic and Grotesque Literature ! ONE TRADITIONAL ASL production that clearly displays the carnivalesque nature of Deaf American literature is “Literary Night.” This cultural staple, presented by literary societies at residential schools or by adult organizations, is a heterogeneous mix of news, storytelling, skits, one-act plays, poetry/song, art sign, and mimicry . These diverse forms and performance styles are assembled into a kind of variety or talent show, but here the accent is (or is supposed to be) on the “literary.” Before the 1960s there were comparatively few residential schools, and they were widely scattered across the country; thus many of the children had little opportunity to go home during the school year, and the faculty and staff tried to promote various organizations and weekend activities. One of these organizations was usually a literary society for the older students. Because the term 78 “literary” was interpreted very loosely, the literary framework was capacious and flexible enough to accommodate almost anything from nativist ASL art to signed English readings, although it usually contained works that were originally literary. Because their education has been modeled as much as possible on that in the public schools, deaf schoolchildren have always been exposed to literature in English. As they have read short stories, novels, and poetry, they have learned to analyze plots, themes, and symbolism. In absorbing details about the backgrounds of the writers themselves, they have become more knowledgeable about British and American culture and society as a whole. Some of them—perhaps fascinated by the adventures of Jack London’s characters, or drawn into the trials and tribulations of heroines created by women writers—have taken the next step: using their favorite authors as models, they have come up with their own poetry and narratives in English, with varying degrees of success. In addition, students in schools that permitted sign language in class were also encouraged by their English instructors to sign English stories and poems, thereby demonstrating that they understood all the English words and, it was hoped, the work as a whole. Such adaptations were expressly intended to promote an appreciation of literature in English, both by the performers and by the other students in the audience. Many of the English teachers at residential schools were graduates of Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University). They were generally fluent in spoken English because they were likely to be among the many deaf people in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who were (to use a term disliked by most of today’s Deaf Americans) “postlingually” deaf: that is, they became deaf after they had already acquired language (i.e., English). Many of them enrolled at schools for the deaf and then the only college for deaf students, Gallaudet, where the more enterprising adapted English works to sign language, often under the aegis of the Ballard Literary Society.1 Upon graduation, they took up posts at schools around the country, where they may well have helped promote or establish literary societies modeled on the one they had known in Literary Night 79 college. They were then undoubtedly the most likely candidates to serve as faculty sponsors for such societies. Because ASL was not recognized as a legitimate language, teachers and students alike signed English works using a kind of manually coded English, without entirely translating them or adapting them. But we can see in this “signing” of English works and in Literary Night a linguistic phenomenon known as polyglossia : that is, “the simultaneous presence of two or more national languages interacting within a single cultural system.”2 In this case, we have not just two languages but two modalities: an aural language (with a written form) and a visual language. Moreover, this intertwining reflects not the mixing of equals but the jockeying for position of two languages of very different statuses. English is the “majority language,” ever trying to extend its control; ASL is the “minority language,” relegated at the time to being a supplementary means of communication. Yet ASL, a language with its own morphological, phonological, and semantic complexity, attempts to avoid, negotiate, or subvert that control.3 Despite being devalued, the minority language asserts itself in this intermixing; the result is an ongoing tug-of-war. No full-length Literary Night program is commercially available on video, but a few works have provided some idea of its nature. For example, Don...