Commentary: Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly
Please note that I am a hearing person who is actively learning about deaf culture and sign languages. My thoughts and opinions presented in this commentary come from a hearing perspective and are therefore not gospel by any means. i am studying and writing out of a personal interest and curiosity— not as a scholar or authority on the topic. To learn more about deaf culture and sign languages, honor, listen to, and respect deaf people over those of us who are hearing.
Trigger warning: Reference to physical abuse.
Written by a professional sign language interpreter, Song for a Whale is both a flamboyant tale of childhood and a learned tribute to sound.
Iris is a deaf middle school student who runs away with her deaf grandmother to the coast of Oregon in search for a very special whale, Blue 55, who sings at a much higher frequency than other whales, leaving him isolated. Iris imagines a way to communicate with Blue 55 to show him that he is not alone and that someone out there hears his special song. She creates a song of her own. Along with her grandmother, Iris goes on an adventure to find Blue 55 and play her song for him.
In case my previous commentaries aren’t clear, I’m a softy. Song for a Whale was one of those tender stories that hit my softy button; I cried several times while reading. I blame this partially on the fact that the story is about a child and an animal (I’m only human). But I also blame Lynne Kelly’s strength in conveying the complexities of communication, particularly with reference to deafness and sound.
Iris is the only member of her immediate family who is deaf. Both her grandparents are deaf, but, after her grandfather’s death, Iris’s grandmother is disengaged, pulling away from the family and slipping deeper into loneliness. Iris’s parents and brother know how to sign, but not as well as her friend, Wendell, who is also deaf. Iris attends a hearing school where she is accompanied by an interpreter and Wendell attends the Deaf school nearby. Iris is often lonely without other Deaf people and she struggles to feel heard. Iris’s own sense of isolation mirrors that of Blue 55’s. Scattered throughout the narrative, Lynne Kelly writes brief chapters from Blue 55’s perspective, as he wanders the ocean alone in search of community. His song confuses the creatures he encounters, especially other whales. Teams of marine biologists and scientists know about Blue 55 and are eager to tag him so that they can study his migrations. His unique song singles him out as an important subject of study and it’s through a documentary screened in Iris’s science class that Iris comes to know about him. Iris senses a strong connection between herself and Blue 55 and her mind can’t help but dream up how she could communicate with him—even if just for a moment to let him know someone is listening.
While the plot of the story centers around Iris’s journey to Blue 55, the plot is informed, guided by, and rooted in Deaf culture. This is the primary reason I read the book, as I am currently researching for an upcoming piece about signing and Deaf culture presented in Fiction.
Ultimately, Song for a Whale is a story about
1) being heard,
2) about having a voice,
and 3) about sound’s relationship to communication.
All of these topics are deeply embedded in Deaf culture.
Being heard:
Iris and Blue 55 both want to be heard, meaning they want their unique voices to be honored and respected rather than ignored or judged. At home, Iris doesn’t feel heard by her mom or dad, even though they both know varying degrees of ASL (American Sign Language). At dinner one night, Iris tells her parents that she wants to travel to find Blue 55 and play the song she made for him. Her parents tell her no because she would miss school and because it’s a long trip. Iris is upset and they change the conversation. Iris’s dad makes a joke that Iris doesn’t understand; he frequently uses idioms in English that don’t translate to ASL. When Iris asks that someone explain the joke to her so that she can laugh at it too, she is unintentionally dismissed. “The train has left the station,” she is told— another idiom that Iris struggles to de-code. Iris is deeply hurt by these experiences. She feels left out. Out of frustration, Iris tries to explain to her dad why that behavior is rude, but she is signing too fast and he can’t keep up. He asks her to slow down. She replies,
“It doesn’t matter what I do. You don’t understand anyway! What if your whole life was like this? What if you were that whale, in an ocean with no one to talk to?”
I’d like to share a brief story that connects deeply to what Iris is feeling and saying here.
Letitia Ford was a 14 year old deaf student who attended the Pennsylvania School For Deaf, founded in 1820 making it the third-oldest school of its kind in the United States, when David G. Seixas— the founder of the school— was principal. Letitia was among a group of young students who were physically abused by Seixas. Letitia’s mother complained to the school board, saying that Seixas pinched her daughter’s thighs and that he made late-night visits to the girls’ rooms alone. This unleashed a scandal and an investigation into the matter, led by the school board. Normally, with an investigation like this, the board would interview the victims to hear their side of the story. But in this case, the victims were deaf and communicated via sign language, while the board members and directors were hearing and did not speak sign language. The board then had to rely on the testimony of the matrons who watched over the girls. The matrons had witnessed some of Seixas’s abusive behaviors and back-up the victims’ stories. While there is power in numbers, the more spread out a story is, the harder it is to prove and act upon. The effect is a silencing of victims.
From Inside Deaf Culture, by Carol Padden and Tom Humpheries,
“When the students were deprived of a voice of their own, David Seixas could claim that the directors had misunderstood the young women’s pantomime, or that the matron was ill-disposed against Seixas. The most insidious effect of institutions designed this way, in Foucault’s words, is the silencing of those under their care. They are rendered mute. Further deepening their silence was the fact that the women were from poor families whose claim to public charity was fragile and tenuous.”
One thing that we hearing people need to know is that there is a long history of hearing people controlling the bodies of deaf people and not listening to their needs and wants. While this story is a dark example of how that phenomenon can cause harm, it ties into Iris’s moment at the dinner table. She feels unheard yet controlled by the hearing authority figures around her. Her father’s response, “the train has left the station,” unintentionally attempts to silence Iris by locking her out of the context of the conversation. Her hearing parents control her body (telling her she can’t go find Blue 55) while also ignoring her needs and wants. The effect is a strong sense of being unheard— a common feeling that is deeply rooted in the history of Deaf culture.
Having a voice:
Being heard also has a lot to do with having a voice— another theme in Song for a Whale. When we say voice, what we mean is self-determination or the ability to make decisions autonomously that meet the needs and wants of the individual or group specifically, even if it goes against what others think is the best decision. We see this concept manifest in Song for a Whale with regards to schooling.
Iris’s best friend, Wendell, goes to a school for the Deaf, where he is surrounded by Deaf students, teachers, and administrators. Iris attends a hearing school, where is is surrounded by hearing students, teachers, and administrators. Throughout the story, Wendell and Iris’s deaf grandmother encourage Iris to ask her mom to switch schools so she can be with Deaf community. But Iris’s mom is hearing and her insecurity about “losing her daughter” prevents her from seeing the importance of Deaf culture in Iris’s life. This topic has everything to do with voice— self-determination. I won’t be diving into the rich complexity of Deaf schools in this commentary, as it requires more space and time than this piece allows, but I will explore Iris’s desire to go to a Deaf school rather than a hearing one.
Iris feels alone at the hearing school because only her interpreter speaks her language and understands her. The Deaf school offers a space for Iris to be heard and to build community with other deaf people. Iris’s mother does not understand this because she doesn’t truly appreciate Deaf culture as its own unique phenomenon.
Again, from Inside Deaf Culture,
“"There was almost no place in public consciousness for his hard-earned realization that Deaf people led rich social lives…”
That social life is what Iris is longing for and it takes persuasion to convince her mother of the validity of changing schools. Tied in with such misconceptions is her mom’s fear that Iris won’t need her anymore once she has Deaf community— an insecurity that blocks the change of schools too. At the end of the day, Iris wants her family to trust her with the ability to make her own decisions as a deaf person, regardless of their insecurities or what they think the best decision is for her. Iris’s deafness separates her from her hearing family via the tricky road of communication. Her family of course wants effective communication and, deep down, perhaps they hope that pushing Iris to assimilate to hearing culture is the best way. Iris functions very well in the hearing world. She communicates with hearing people in various ways, depending on the situation, and a majority of her interactions are positive. It isn’t Iris that needs to accept hearing culture (she really has no choice considering the majority of the population are hearing); it’s her parents that need to accept Deaf culture.
Sound’s relationship to communication:
Blue 55 can’t communicate with other whales because he sings at a frequency of 55 Hz, rather than the “normal” 35 Hz or lower. Iris can communicate with hearing people, but not always in her own language and it is not by any means easy. Because Blue 55 can’t communicate with other whales, some of the scientists studying him wondered if he was deaf, like Iris. This raises an interesting question about how sound is interpreted in communication.
Carol Padden and Tom Humphries share in Inside Deaf Culture,
“A widespread misconception among hearing people is that Deaf people live in a world without sound.”
These two Deaf writers and scholars deduce that this assumption is rooted in hearing people’s fear of hearing loss. But the assumption is simply not true. Deaf people have a relationship to sound; it is just different from hearing people’s relationship to sound.
“In any discussion of deaf people’s knowledge of sound, it is important to keep in mind that perception of sound is not automatic or straightforward, but is shaped through learned, culturally-defined practices.”
Essentially, sound is interpreted differently across languages and cultures. There is no one way to interact with sound. Even if you can’t hear, you can feel sound as it vibrates along surfaces; you can see it in the way people around you react; you can sense it paired with other sensory information like taste or visual stimuli. And yet, to the hearing world, deaf people aren’t interacting with sound, rather, they interact with silence.
According to Inside Deaf Culture,
“To hearing people the metaphor of silence portrays what they believe to be the dark side of Deaf people, not only an inability to use sound for human communication, but a failure to know the world directly.”
This notion dehumanizes and de-legitimizes the interpretation of sound across cultures, particularly in Deaf culture. Iris understands that Blue 55’s relationship with sound is tied to her own. Iris understands too that the hearing human world judges both of them for their communication styles. They are judged for failing to communicate and thus pitied for not being able to navigate the world of sound.
Iris’s song for Blue 55 is more than a symbol of love and mutual understanding; it’s a direct contradiction to the hearing world’s assumptions and a declaration that communication is more than hearing or not hearing; it’s a love language that requires time, energy, and curiosity to decode and interpret. If Iris can communicate with a whale, then hearing people and Deaf people can communicate too. It just takes that time, energy, and curiosity. It just takes the acknowledgement that there is no one way to interpret sound.
For those of you who enjoyed this commentary and want to learn more, keep an eye out for an upcoming piece to be published on this website about Deaf culture and sign languages in Fiction. I will be diving deeper into some of the information I shared in this piece and into Song for a Whale too. Informed by Deaf writers’ and scholars’ words, the piece will offer an in-depth exploration of how a handful of fiction books navigate Deaf culture and sign language. I won’t be making judgments in terms of what representation is objectively good or bad because that is not a position I have any authority to take. I am simply exploring this culture out of a desire to more respectfully talk with Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing friends in my life and, when appropriate, to write about it from an informed lens. Reading and then digesting what I read is a way for me to approach that learning process. For my hearing friends out there, I hope you take the time to read Deaf writers and books about Deaf characters and culture.