The World According to (the) Deaf: The Place of ASL Literature in a Comprehensive Deaf Studies Curriculum¹

Jane F. Kelleher and James J. Fernandes
(Abridged Version for Proceedings)

In considering the subject of ASL literature, we examined a sample of five videotaped stories and poems, analyzed the cultural insights they express, and suggested how to use such examples of ASL literature to help students become more fully literate in ASL. The sample included two stories, 1) “The Motel” and 2) “A Deaf Man Robs a Bank,” both related by Massachusetts storyteller Elinor Kraft; a third story, 3) “The Cow-Man,” told by Iowan Joe Myklebust; 4) a well-known poem, “Eye Music,” by Ella Mae Lentz; and 5) a published (on videotape) poem, “Paradox,” by Patrick Graybill.² Given the space limitations of this summary, only one story and one poem will be discussed here.³ Readers are cautioned against taking the following translations as full representations of a live performance. ASL literature is, above all, a social phenomenon. It arises out of a gathering of Deaf people who want to see their real-life experiences reconstructed by a member of their own culture. Even videotapes are inadequate representations of live storytelling events because they do not provide a sense of the interactions between the storyteller and the spectators.

The Motel

As told by Elinor Kraft
(Summary Translation by Jane Kelleher)

A Deaf couple on their honeymoon were driving late at night. By 3 a.m., the groom couldn’t keep his eyes open, so they stopped at a motel and paid $30 for the last available room. Just as the groom was locking the door, his bride told him she was hungry, so off he went with a list of items to purchase. While he was gone, the bride put on her negligee and turned off the lights. When the groom got back to the motel, he had forgotten which room was theirs. There were no numbers on the doors, which sported different colors, and all the lights were out. After considering what to do, he had an idea, got back into his car, and honked the horn loud and long. The lights went on in every room but one, and the groom said to himself, “Right-on, that’s my Deaf wife!” He apologized to the guests he’d wakened and went confidently to the room to give his wife her late-night snack.

This joke, now a classic, has been widely spread throughout the Deaf community. Deaf people, especially children, who see this funny story in the context of a Deaf gathering receive a reaffirmation of the Deaf way of life. A moral lesson that can be gleaned from the joke is that Deaf people should never give up, no matter what frustrations block their way in hearing society. Through shrewd thinking, Deaf people can find a way to accomplish what they need despite obstacles posed by the dominant society. It is interesting to note that the Deaf couple would be isolated from each other for the night if the husband could not find his way back to his wife. Thus, the joke also shows that Deaf people are adept at finding one another. Historically, hearing society has tried to keep Deaf people from marrying each other.⁴ But here, the Deaf groom finds his way back to his bride with the help of a blaring car horn. Ironically, it is a hearing instrument that facilitates the consummation of the wedding night. In this respect, the joke presents the notion that Deaf people actually have an advantage over hearing people, who could never be so efficient about determining where their motel room is in the middle of the night.

For hearing students, the joke provides a non-threatening entry into discussion of oppression and misunderstanding of Deaf people by the larger society. One point that comes out clearly in the joke is that the Deaf groom is in no way dependent on hearing people to accomplish his goal. In fact, he finds the solution by taking advantage of hearing “weakness.”

It is important to remember that most ASL literature, even with the recent availability of commercially videotaped stories and poems, occurs in a context when hearing people are absent. As Stokoe suggests, ASL literature is an “inside” activity that often includes humor.⁵ The humor of the motel joke underlies one of the more telling functions of ASL literature and the character of Deaf spectators. Humor in any language is important because it serves to create intimacy among the people who participate in the amusement, especially if the humor is dependent on a shared, culturally exclusive or “inside” set of knowledge. Grassroots literature among Deaf people is more than merely a means of expression or a celebration of language for its own sake. It is an important activity that reaffirms the status of the audience as a linguistic community—a community that does not dissolve when the performance ends.

An interesting subject for further study might be a comparative analysis of ASL literature and the literatures of oppressed peoples. There is, for example, an intriguing parallel between the motel joke and the Uncle Remus fables that explored the subject of oppression of African Americans. The Deaf groom reminds us of the clever Br’er Rabbit character who constantly outwits the despotic Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear by using his knowledge of their tendencies and weaknesses. When they snare him in a ball of tar, for example, he tricks them into punching him and getting themselves caught up in the black goo while he escapes. The lesson in both “The Motel” joke and the Uncle Remus stories reads something like this: There may be more of them than us, and they may wield a lot of authority, but we’re clever and capable, and we can outsmart them by following our own ways.

Eye Music

Created and Performed by Ella Mae Lentz
(Translation by Jane Kelleher)

eye music

of the telephone wires

sheets of music

lines that

rise and quiver

sway and lower

along with the passing

of space and time

no ears needed to hear

nor instruments to play

eyes

are the ears

and the piano

and the flute

are the wires

an occasional pole

is a drum

here’s one bold

wandering wire

and now five

dancing high and low

in turns

with rhythm

of the poles

five disappearing into one

again

and then a crowd

overlapping

quickly

then slowly

so beautiful

to the eye and heart

one wonders

what happens

inside

When she performed this poem in Honolulu on Jan. 6, 1991, Ella Lentz explained that as a child she enjoyed riding railroad trains. This poem expresses both the kinesthetic and visual sense of rhythm and music that she experienced while on board a moving train, watching telephone poles and the wires they carried speed by.⁶ The poem ends with a quizzical comment about what really goes on inside those wires, alluding with poetic irony to A. G. Bell’s invention, which until recently has proved a barrier to communication for Deaf people rather than the aid Bell was seeking to invent.

As Lentz points out, unlike poems written in English and translated into ASL, poetry created in American Sign Language reflects the vibrancy of Deaf culture and the real experience of Deaf people.⁷ Such poetry is much more readily understood and appreciated by Deaf audiences. This suggests that teachers of Deaf children and youth could make excellent use of ASL poetry both for students to watch, appreciate, and discuss, and as a means for students to create their own products of literary expression. After showing a videotape of “Eye Music” to a class of Deaf high school students, we found them ready and eager to identify and analyze some of the poetic elements of the piece. One student remarked that the “open-4” handshape of the telephone wires had moved and changed orientation to become a sheet of written music. Another student suggested that birds perch on telephone lines in the same way that musical notes perch on the lines of a page of music. A third student found that “music” of the poem was expressed in the repetitive movement of the telephone poles as they passed in and out of sight. In each of these examples the concept of a visual-gestural metaphor was readily apparent and appreciated during a first exposure to ASL poetry, and at least one student was prompted to create his own poetic metaphor. The implications for the classroom teacher are obvious: Not only is ASL literature worthy of close study in its own right, but for Deaf students, it may also serve as an accessible bridge to appreciating the form and content of written literature.

We have also shown this poem to groups of hearing people to help them glimpse the rich visual experience of Deaf people and enjoy the expressiveness of ASL in capturing some of that experience. The subject of this piece makes it particularly appropriate in training sessions for TTY/TDD relay operators.

Recommendations

Hopefully, this very brief examination of a story and a poem begins to suggest how effectively ASL literature captures and expresses the experience, values, and norms of Deaf people—in short, the Deaf world view. One of the great, sad ironies of the education of most American Deaf students is that years of study are devoted to English and to literature written in English, yet no classroom time is allotted to the study of ASL and its beautiful and fascinating body of literature. Oddly, teachers who have ignored ASL poetry and fiction in favor of written works may find in the former the very tool they need to motivate students.

A particular attribute of all literature is its ability to effect learning through both intellectual and emotional channels. Hence, exploring ASL literature proves to be an easy-to-travel avenue toward attitudinal learning. For hearing students, ASL prose and poetry can readily impart an understanding of the Deaf perspective and help demolish myths and misconceptions about Deaf people. For this reason, the study of ASL literature should be a crucial aspect of the education of American Sign Language/English interpreters, teachers, and other professionals who work with Deaf people. For Deaf students, especially those whose educational settings tend to deprive them of contact with Deaf culture, studying ASL literature becomes a source of pride, self-understanding, and self-esteem.

We strongly suggest that teachers encourage Deaf students to create their own poems and narratives in ASL. As a precursor to this activity, Deaf storytellers and poets from the community should be invited to the school to perform their works and discuss them with the class. Teachers should be careful not to judge the creative products of students but rather to provide opportunities for the performance of student works to Deaf audiences. Discussion and feedback from the audience would follow naturally and should be guided by the understanding that there is no one “correct” interpretation of literature. Thus, room can be made for accepting and valuing each student’s attempt to create a literary piece, and the experience can be a positive one for all. Finally, whenever Deaf literature is performed within the culture, Deaf people are encouraged to save these examples on videotape, adding to the recorded body of works and preserving them for future generations to enjoy and study.

About the Presenters

Jane F. Kelleher became the first Deaf woman in the United States to head a school for the Deaf when in January of 1990 she was appointed director of the Hawaii Department of Education’s newly established Statewide Center for Students with Hearing and Visual Impairments (which includes the former Hawaii School for the Deaf and the Blind). Deaf since birth, she is a graduate of Trinity College and earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Iowa. Her doctoral dissertation pioneered investigation of the Sign Language literature of Deaf Americans. Dr. Kelleher has previously served as coordinator of the University of Hawaii’s Sign Language Interpreter Training Program, chair of the Department of Sign Communication at Gallaudet University, and director of the American Sign Language and Interpreting programs at Northeastern University.

James J. Fernandes is director of the Gallaudet Center on Deafness at Kapiolani Community College in Honolulu. A hearing man, born and raised in Hawaii, he holds a Ph.D. in speech communication from the University of Michigan, where his dissertation examined the rhetoric of the Deaf and hearing founders of Deaf education in America. A professor at Gallaudet University since 1975, he chaired the Department of Communication Arts before coming back to the Islands to establish Gallaudet’s regional center in Hawaii, which opened in the spring of 1988, under a cooperative agreement between Gallaudet and the University of Hawaii.

Endnotes

1.Portions of this paper are excerpted from two earlier papers by Jane F. Kelleher: ASL and English: Linguistic Form and Social Function of Deaf Literature and Sign Language and Deaf Culture in Iowa, both of which were presented at the Mental Health and Deafness Symposium: Bringing It All Together, Des Moines, Iowa, Oct. 4–15, 1988. For a thorough scholarly analysis of a larger body of ASL literature, see Kelleher, J. (1986). Literature by deaf Iowans: Linguistic form and social function. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.

2.Graybill, P. (1990). Poetry in motion; original works in ASL [Video series]. Burtonsville, MD: Sign Media.

3.To obtain a copy of the original paper in its entirety, write to James Fernandes, Gallaudet Center, 4303 Diamond Head Rd., Honolulu, HI 96816.

4.Bell, A. G. (1891). Marriage: An address delivered to the members of the Literary Society of Kendall Green, Washington, D.C., March 6, 1891. Science, 17, 160–163. Alexander Graham Bell argued that marriages between Deaf individuals should be discouraged because of the likelihood of Deaf offspring. Bell is not the only scholar to suggest that Deaf people refrain from intermarriage, but his statement brought the matter to public attention and sparked a controversy that has raged ever since. For further discussion of the marriage patterns of Deaf people, see: Woodward, J. (1982). How you gonna get to heaven if you can’t talk with Jesus: On depathologizing deafness (see pp. 54–55). Silver Spring, MD: T. J. Publishers.

5.Stokoe, W. (1969–70). Sign language diglossia. Studies in Linguistics, 21, 27–41 (see p. 29).

6.The version of the poem shown at the Deaf Studies for Educators conference was taped for broadcast in Hawaii on KGMB TV’s evening news program on Jan. 9, 1991.

7.E. Lentz, interview on KGMB TV evening news, Honolulu, Jan. 9, 1991.