Deaf American Prose 1830-1930

Afterword

259 Afterword Octavian Robinson JENNIFER NELSON and KRISTEN HARMON have compiled an incredible panorama of Deaf America spanning a century, from 1830 to 1930, with more than forty selections of original prose produced by Deaf Americans. This period is rife with a variety of challenges as the Deaf American community grew out of local communities and merged into a national identity as the nineteenth century drew to a close. Jennifer and Kristen’s collection has created an impressionistic portrait that holds deep revelations about the lives of what Alexander Graham Bell has referred to as the deaf variety of the human race in the United States. Over the years, scholars of the American Deaf community have chronicled its genesis and interpreted the lived experience of deaf people through the written records they left behind. Most of this previous scholarship has been derived from nonfiction, yet, as Jennifer and Kristen have shown in this volume, there is much more to unearth in the wealth of Deaf American literary prose that illuminates our understanding of the American Deaf community. Within this volume, through both fiction and nonfiction, light is shed upon issues that dominated the landscape of Deaf America, capturing impressions of moments scattered across time as seen through the deaf lens. The prose pieces penned by deaf people highlight the pressures and challenges they faced as well as present stories of resistance and agency. Many of the various themes and challenges that deaf people experienced during this century and explored in this volume is best summed up by the late National Association of the Deaf President James H. Cloud who, in a 1920 call to arms to promote the welfare of the deaf, thundered against “the medical faddist, otologistic wiseacre, the oral extremists, civil service autocrats, traffic blunderhead, the classification idiot, impostors, and fakirs.”* *James H. Cloud, “President’s Address,” Proceedings of the Thirteenth Convention of the National Association of the Deaf (1920), 9–10. 260 Afterword These impressions also reveal how deaf people were very much a part of the vibrant tapestry of American history. The prose in this volume illustrates deaf people as participants in Progressive Era reforms, the sexual revolution, and religious awakenings. They were also subjects of Darwinian thought, eugenics, reform movements, and Nativist sentiment. Deaf people also contributed to the dialectic of race and gender, as revealed by a number of works in this collection. This book is, in a sense, a history of the American Deaf community without the feel or tone of a historian’s product. Instead, this work offers us greater intimacy with the subjects of our inquiry. More than an engaging tome for all those with an interest in the American Deaf community, from the casual observer to the serious scholar, this book also serves a multitude of academic purposes. Deaf American Prose: – is an excellent primary source reader for those involved in related disciplines ranging from deaf studies to deaf history to disability studies. This work also serves as a splendid literary collection for those interested in literature and the writings of a unique community. This is also a valuable tool for those interested in broader areas of inquiry as we remember deaf people are as American as Norman Rockwell and their stories should be woven into the fabric of our understanding of American history, society, and literature. This work provides us with a richer appreciation of the deaf experience and opens the door to further academic inquiry. ...