Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology

Abiola Haroun (1970– )

241  Abiola Haroun (1970– ) While Abiola Haroun did attend Gallaudet and, afterward, kept her connection to the signing community, she was never exposed to the writings of other Deaf poets—that is, until she fell in love with Loy E. Golladay’s collection of poetry in a public library. This discovery led her to take her passion for writing to a higher level by enrolling in a master of fine arts program in creative writing. What is interesting about her three poems here is that all of them were written before she read Golladay’s work. That they share the same themes, and even the same imagery, with much of Deaf poetry is a testament to how similar the Deaf experience can be for very different people. Though she says nothing new in her praise of signing over speech, the suffering of Deaf people, the saving grace of deafness, or the beauty of “eye music,” Haroun’s poems have their own voices, each with their individual charm, that add much to the canon. She manages to avoid the pitfalls of many other Deaf poets who write unwittingly—until or if they finally come across the work of other Deaf poets—what are mere repetitions of what has already been written. It is also much to her credit that she did not write only as a Deaf person but also as a Black Deaf person, through “The Deaf Negro” imagining a history and claiming it as her own. Abiola Haroun was born in Nigeria. She became deaf at age ten after a bout with chicken pox. Haroun moved to England as a child and attended Mary Hare Grammar School in Newbury, Berkshire. At seventeen, she moved to the United States to attend Gallaudet University, where she received her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and biology in 1994. She has worked as a chemist for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, Baxter Inc., and Human Genome Sciences. Now an American citizen, Haroun lives in Maryland with her son, Matthew. ...