Deaf art has been having a moment lately.

Deaf Spotlight wrapped its biggest yet literature festival last week, while the #DeafShelf continues to expand—I like this account for tracking new releases by deaf and hard-of-hearing authors.

Visual artist Christine Sun Kim is a MacArthur Fellow! (And, speaking of geniuses, Raymond Antrobus was named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry earlier this year. Check out my interview with him in a previous issue of this newsletter.)

Deaf photographer Stephen Iliffe also made history in the UK when the National Portrait Gallery acquired three of his photographs of deaf subjects, one of which was also named the Portrait of Britain.

For my own part, fresh off a whirlwind series of events for the nation’s oldest One Book One City program in Seattle, I red-eyed it home and eventually emerged from beneath a mountain of laundry to find that Mother Tongue is a National Book Award finalist, an honor that would’ve certainly been a bucket list item if it wasn’t so far beyond my wildest dreams.

If you’re NYC-based, the Finalists’ reading takes place on 17 November and is open to the public (though you need tickets!). It, and the awards ceremony, will also be available to stream.

It’s an exciting time to be a Deaf artist and lover of the arts midst what feels a bit like a renaissance for the community.

And yet. Simultaneously outside forces have never been stronger in their attempts to eradicate not only our art, but our very existence. The scientific world continues to expand clinical trials of a gene therapy treatment that restores hearing. (I, unsurprisingly, have thoughts, on Instagram here and in the Inquirer here <gift link.)

Meanwhile, cochlear implant company Med-El announced the advent of their “Totally Invisible Cochlear Implant” (TICI). With the processor fully implanted in the head, Med-El advertisements wasted no time making false promises, touting the ability to, “forget one’s hearing loss” and lesson stigma, while parents and healthcare professionals of deaf children predictably took to the comments to rejoice that the device would effectively eliminate said children’s autonomy by ensuring they could never take their processors off. (The on/off is controlled by a phone app, to be gatekept by caregivers and teachers, especially for young children. Unsurprisingly, I have even more thoughts.)

In our ongoing national nightmare, special education oversight has been further hollowed out at the Department of Education, RFK Jr. continues spewing all manner of ableist nonsense out of HHS, while the biggest Medicaid, SNAP and other service cuts are due to kick in after the midterms. Meanwhile, the government has layered in a bonus dual-pronged approach to disability erasure, clearing portions of the legal guidance that currently prevent forcible institution, and removing disability questions from the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey.

The deaf world has arguably been in peril long before this administration, though: most deaf children are born to hearing parents; most deaf children in the Global North are implanted and mainstreamed; most deaf children are not taught their local sign language, and as a result, deaf children are experiencing language deprivation at epidemic proportions (statistical reviews estimating about 70%). Consequently, the community and our infrastructure continues to erode, and the authoritarian love of eugenics only tightens the screws.

What’s been both frustrating and fascinating to watch is that, in the face of our final days, deaf art continues to flourish, while deaf and formerly powerful institutions of advocacy like the National Association of the Deaf and Gallaudet are hamstrung by in-fighting, budgetary duress, and voluntary capitulation to the overlords. This is not surprising, exactly, given the number of large American institutions we’ve watched crumble over the last year and a half, learning that our government was more of a string of social norms and niceties than, say, actual laws. But where the halls of power collapse, art blooms.

The cynic in me balks at the way our society praises deaf art while simultaneously trying to rid the world of deaf people, but this, too, is neither new nor a singularly deaf problem—the white supremacist machine consumes all and appropriates as it sees fit.

If you’ve been here a while, though, you know that despite my best efforts, I’m actually an optimist? I love seeing fellow deaf artists getting their flowers. And I really love that art can do what infinity money can’t. I assume that’s why the bot-bros keep trying to take it from us, though they are, as ever, missing the point. The bots may make look-alikes, but they can never make art, the most human thing of all. Here from the beginning, scrawled on the cave walls since before we’d nailed down food security or invented shoes, we’ll be making it at the end, too, whether it’s centuries from now or already well underway.

To see a Deaf Renaissance and Apocalypse converge is strange, but maybe it’s always like that, the way birth and death have always been inextricable. The world will be worse without deaf people, and our eradication may well be used to justify yours, after which the world will be worse without you, too. These days, it seems increasingly unlikely that I will be able to convince anyone in power of this in time to make a meaningful change, and sometimes I do mourn that. But for the moment, I’m glad deaf people are doing our damndest to leave some badass art behind.

PSA
Things are bad, but they can get worse, or be a little less bad! I know these are not the choices we would like, but I will never not believe in down ballot voting as harm reduction. TODAY, Monday the 19th, is the last day to register to vote in PA. Check things for your state at Can I Vote.

Biz

North Jersey! Come hang at the Bergenfield Public Library on 27 October at 6:30 PM to talk True Biz and Mother Tongue. Besides the Finalist readings, this is my last public event for a bit, so please drop in if you’re in the area.