For the hearing world, talking is the end-all-be-all. But do we really need to talk to communicate? A Quiet Kind of Thunder is a young adult story about Steffi, who is selectively mute, who falls in love with Rhys, a Deaf student at her school. It’s a coming-of-age tale about communication and how we all communicate in different ways. Maybe there is more to life than talk!
Read MoreA rebel writer’s daily blog.
Yesterday, I finished a brief but illuminating book about consciousness called Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind by Annaka Harris, a 110-page layman’s approach to what it means to be “conscious”. Intuition, memory, free will, decision-making, meditation, time, identity, perception, matter— Harris touches on it all. But it’s panpsychism that has captured my attention the most because it allows for a limitless understanding of consciousness.
Read MoreA story of sibling rivalry, Deaf culture, sign language, and relationships between Deaf and hearing people, Strong Deaf is an emotionally rich children’s/middle grade book that doesn’t shy away from the precariousness of communication— the tension inherent to being understood.
Read MoreMark Drolsbaugh is a Deaf writer and an educator at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. I chose to read Anything But Silent— a collection of his articles about deafness. He shares both insightful and funny stories about karate as a confidence-building tool for Deaf kids, being “on the fence” as a Hard-of-Hearing person, life as a Super Phony, as he calls himself, (finding ways to pass as hearing around hearing folks), misunderstandings about ASL, cochlear implants, and much more.
Read MoreWritten by a professional sign language interpreter, Song for a Whale is both a flamboyant tale of childhood and a learned tribute to sound. Ultimately, Song for a Whale is a story about being heard, about having a voice, and about sound’s relationship to communication. All of these topics are deeply embedded in Deaf culture.
Read MoreGod in Pink takes us to some gruesome depths of violence against queer people, yet there are also brilliant moments of queer love, of queer expression, and of spiritual connection with the queerness of the Divine.
Read MoreDeaf Culture, in a sense, is its own character in Feathers.
Read MoreWhat I appreciated about Taproot was the Brown, queer love at its center and how Keezy Young explored some of the trying dynamics behind gender, identity, and sexuality. Jealousy, insecurity, worthlessness. They are barriers between ourselves and others. How do we cross those barriers?
Read MoreSplit Tooth is an experience unlike any other. While reading, I felt the distinct sensation of witnessing something delightfully wild, prophetic, and nightmarish all at once. I knew, from page one, that this was not a book I could finish unchanged.
Read MoreWhat I'd like to focus on here is (at least in my opinion) the impressively dynamic pacing of The Water Dancer especially compared to the traditional pacing of most historical fiction novels.
Read MoreFor those seeking a climate change book that will actually connect you with approachable, imaginative, and meaningful ideas for action, this is it.
Read MoreFor those of you interested in learning more about Deaf culture, history, and signed languages, I can't recommend this brief but knowledgeable book enough!
Read MoreWhat I want to say here is that for all of my White family and friends who don't think they would need to do something like this because they aren't racist, or because they "get it", you do need to do this. You (just like me) need to take antiracism and make it personal-- to question and challenge the version of yourself in your mind because I can guarantee there is someone else underneath. It doesn't make you a bad person or less deserving of love. But we have to reckon with the other self we hold inside or else we can't be fully invested in antiracism work-- or else we can't do much good.
Read MoreI've been on the hunt lately for books written by and/or about Deaf and HOH characters, or any character who signs to communicate. Jam is not Deaf or HOH. She signs because she wants to and chooses to. She voices (or speaks out loud) sometimes, and more as the story progresses and the drama intensifies, but the culture of signing is present and alive in her relationships with other characters.
Read More"Misadra" means "seizure" in Arabic, whereas "Mishadra" means "I can't."
Read MoreI could go on and on about all I learned from this book-- from the birth of capitalism and racism (conjoined twins, as Kendi calls them) to the simplicity of the racist-antiracist "peelable nametag" that we each wear and switch between every moment of every day without even realizing it. Kendi takes a notoriously complicated, hidden, and propagandistic historical web and turns it into something so clear.
Read MoreTrans Love is an anthology of poetry and writing by Trans and non-binary writers, edited together by Freiya Benson. The collection covers sex and relationships, non-binary love, faith and belief, family and friendships, and self-love.
Read MoreHarriet A. Washington’s goliath of a book contains research, oral histories, collective memories, history, and legislation regarding medical exploitation on plantations, medical experimentation on enslaved Africans and freedmen, antebellum clinics, anatomical dissection and public display, the Tuskegee experiments, eugenics, radiation experiments, research on Black prisoners, research on Black children, genetics, the imposed criminality of illness, surgical technology, and bioterrorism. I could go on and on about all that I learned from this text, but I'll put it simply: This book reveals many of the origins and contexts surrounding racist stereotypes and ideologies that we see today.
Read MoreThe word nation (at this time in Hungary) did not mean simply a geographical collective of one people. Nation meant the nobility and their ability to control the political landscape of Hungary. To be Magyar was not to belong to the people; to be Magyar was to belong to the ruling class.
Read MoreMaitland's thesis, if you will, claims that the European fairytales that many of us know (even if we don't remember how we know them) reveal much more about the external than the internal; rather than exposing details of our subconscious and primal identities, as some claim, these stories unearth our ancient relationship with forests.
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