patreon.com

Make Hearingness Strange

2026-02-18 · 13:18 UTC ·Culture Study ·25 min read

Brief

Rachel Kolb’s conversation about her memoir Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice is strongest when it turns ordinary hearing-centered assumptions into something visible and strange. Kolb, who was born deaf and grew up with both American Sign Language and English, uses her own experience preparing for a 2013 TED Talk to expose how deeply public communication is organized around a narrow archetype: the verbally fluent, hearing, non-disabled speaker whose authority is presumed to reside in polished spoken English. That framing helps explain why the word “articulate” can feel less like praise than social sorting. Kolb notes that many people across marginalized categories—Black speakers, disabled people, non-native English speakers—recognize the same backhanded compliment. Her alternative is a relational view of language: understanding is not just the speaker’s burden, and difficulty in communication should prompt the audience to adapt too.

The interview also tracks Kolb’s movement from seeing deafness through a deficit frame imposed by others toward understanding it as a distinct and generative way of being in the world. She credits her family, early intervention supports, deaf education specialists, interpreters, and speech therapists with helping her understand that the real obstacle was not deafness itself but an inaccessible environment. Later, meeting deaf peers from the ADA era broadened that perspective further, showing her “more ways to be deaf” and deepening her appreciation for ASL literature, theater, and technical vocabulary, including signs developed for subjects like science and engineering. The result is a richer claim: deafness can be a source of knowledge, humor, and intimacy, not simply an impairment to overcome.

Kolb’s practical observations about accessibility are especially sharp. She describes how hearing culture can look bizarre from the outside: people responding to unseen alarms, conducting “invisible conversations” on the phone, or multitasking through speech without making eye contact. Those examples lead into a critique of how hearing audiences react to interpreters online, often praising ASL interpretation as though it were exotic performance without understanding that facial expression and embodied motion are grammatical features of a full language. She draws useful distinctions between artistic ASL performance, such as at the Super Bowl, and routine interpretation at news conferences, where virality can overshadow the basic purpose of access. Her broader design lesson is that society prefers individualized technical fixes—hearing aids, implants, medical interventions—over slower, collective accommodations like captions, visual alerts, reduced crosstalk, clearer turn-taking, and social norms that make lipreading or signing easier. Accessibility, in her framing, is not a one-time solution but an ongoing group practice.

Why it matters

An interview tied to Rachel Kolb’s 2026 memoir Articulate reframes deafness and communication by treating “hearingness” as a cultural norm worth scrutinizing rather than an invisible default.

Key details

Kolb says her 2013 TED Talk forced her to confront the narrow ideal of the public “rhetor”: typically imagined in U.S. culture as white, male, hearing, non-disabled, verbally polished, and physically commanding, an inheritance she traces back to Roman oratory and Western elocution norms.
She argues that calling someone “articulate” is often socially loaded, especially when directed at people not expected to speak in a dominant register of English; the compliment can reveal racial, disability, and language hierarchies while obscuring that communication is a shared responsibility between speaker and audience.
Kolb describes a shift in how she understands deafness: from a trait others framed as a deficit to a source of presence, knowledge, and linguistic abundance, shaped by growing up with ASL and English, weekly speech therapy, and later finding deaf peers from the post-1990 ADA generation who helped her see “more ways to be deaf.”
She emphasizes that ASL is not a transcription layer for English but a full language with its own grammar; facial expression and whole-body movement are part of linguistic fluency, not mere “expressiveness,” which is why hearing audiences often misread interpreters as spectacle.
The piece distinguishes contexts for signed performance: at events like the Super Bowl, deaf signers may rightly be treated as ASL performers, while at mayoral briefings or conventions the signer is often a hearing interpreter providing access, even though online reactions frequently center hearing viewers’ amazement rather than deaf users’ needs.

Cleaned source text

title: Make Hearingness Strange

author: Culture Study

content_type: newsletter

publication: patreon.com

published: 2026-02-18T13:18:26+00:00

source_url: gmail://19c70e701fd443af

word_count: 5619

This week's episode of The Culture Study Podcast hits that sweet spot of hilarious, comforting, and useful — Natasha Vaynblat answers all your questio... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

Make Hearingness Strange

Culture Study

Feb 18, 2026

.png)

View in app

This week's episode of The Culture Study Podcast hits that sweet spot of hilarious, comforting, and useful — Natasha Vaynblat answers all your questions about the weird shit people say to "childless freaks." Just click __the magic link_ _to listen wherever you get your podcasts.__Paid Subscribers.....make sure to check in on this week's threads, each essential in very different ways:

What Are You Reading (in February)

What Feels Really Hard Right Now

I love any text that forces me to look at the status quo askance — to make what we think of "just the way things are" as _strange_. That's precisely what Rachel Kolb does in her phenomenal new book, _Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice_. She decenters "hearingness" from its accepted position of prominence, and invites us to think expansively about how we define "good" and "fluent' communication (and who's responsible for making it possible).

Below, we talk about how the image of the (white, male, able-bodied) _rhetor_ still frames our understanding of "articulate," the enduring conception of deafness as a _lack_ , infantilizing "triumph" language, what gives us the ick re: the online discourse about interpreters, the hilarious distractability of hearing people, and so much more. This conversation is going to stick with me and resurface anytime I even _think_ of describing someone as "articulate" — but also every time I'm in a group with a bunch of crosstalk and someone with hearing loss keeps receding further and further from the conversation. Read on and let it stick with you, too.

You can learn more about Rachel Kolb_ _here_ _and buy Articulate_ _here_ _.

I’d love to start with the story of prepping for your T.E.D. Talk back in 2013 as a way of talking about the “right” way of communicating — and the general (if usually unacknowledged) ideal of the _rhetor_? How are those norms underlined and reproduced in our daily lives? (I’m especially thinking of how people wield the world _articulate_— usually towards people who they wouldn’t “expect” to be so, and the continuing legacy of oralism.

It's so funny to me, new people I meet (especially in deaf and signing circles) still sometimes recognize me from that TED talk, since they’ve seen the video on YouTube. I never expected it to get out in the world like that.

When I was first invited to give that talk, I still remember how terrified I felt. I thought, _Really, how am I even going to do this?_ Getting up onstage to speak aloud to so many people was one of the things I was most afraid of doing. I’d felt self-conscious about my speaking voice for years, especially during many “public-speaking-related” activities in school, like reading my writing out loud or giving presentations in class. I was born deaf, and I grew up with both American Sign Language and English. The ASL part came easily to me, as did written English, but spoken English was always much trickier. It’s really not a fully accessible mode of communication for me. I went to speech therapy every week throughout my childhood, and I got used to speaking out loud in many parts of my life, but I still do speak with a “deaf accent” and always will. I was very aware of my deaf voice when I was preparing for my TED talk, since at that time I could only imagine a TED speaker as exactly that: a speaker of verbal English.

There’s so much to unpack here, and I remember making it to the night before the TED talk and then wondering: _Okay, wait a minute. Why have I put such pressure on myself? I could have decided to give this talk in ASL, too._ Speaking wasn’t my only option.

Now I’m very aware of how that cultural ideal of the _rhetor_ does lots of things in our everyday lives. For one, it can uphold a certain imaginary standard of “fluent” communication. In U.S. contexts, I often think of someone speaking their words out loud, in a particular polished register of English. He’s usually a man, and white, and hearing, and not visibly disabled, and he has a certain physical comportment that’s assumed to command the stage and hold the viewers’ attention. Sometimes he’s a public leader or politician, but not always — and of course with that also comes all kinds of ideas about “Americanness” and “connecting with the everyday people,” or about authenticity and what it looks or sounds like, et cetera.

This image of the _rhetor_ is so embedded in our Western cultural imagination, and it goes back a long way: the Romans were big on oratory, and those classical ideals about elocution and public speaking have stayed with us.

I think that “articulate” speaking ideal can make some interesting assumptions about communication and how it happens. I now think of communication as a process that takes place between people: language is a shared responsibility. It’s a two-way street. When we think of that _rhetor_ figure, we may be imagining someone whose style of communicating is so powerful, so clear and self-evident, that the message immediately gets through to whoever is listening. But that’s not always how language works, and “self-evident” meaning holds a whole lot of assumptions (about what an intelligible message even is, and about who is delivering or receiving it).

This is part of why “articulate” can be such a thorny word: yes, it’s wielded towards people who aren’t “expected” to express themselves in this very particular way, which reveals how language is part of all kinds of social hierarchies. I’ve had other friends who aren’t deaf (who are Black, or disabled in some other way, or who don’t speak English as their first language) tell me that they’ve received this kind of “you’re so articulate” remark, too. It can feel really othering, because it assumes that your “baseline” way of being is less compelling or intelligible or authoritative.

But also, I think telling someone that they are “articulate” can sometimes be a failure to recognize the real shared responsibility that communication involves. If you meet someone and their way of expressing themselves isn’t familiar to you, even if it seems more difficult to understand, that can be a reason to examine your own assumptions, and also to put in a little more effort.

I see this all the time with the hearing people I meet. They may need to put in more effort to understand me, whether we’re speaking English or they’re trying to sign in ASL — but I already put in a lot of effort to try to understand them, too. I appreciate when they find ways to meet me halfway. And I try to remember to meet others halfway, too, when I meet someone whose style of language feels difficult for me. I may need to embrace some new approach so we can try to understand each other.

One overall question I ask myself is: what do we do when engaging with someone else requires something new or unfamiliar from us? How does the audience participate in the process of understanding, too, and not just the _rhetor_? What does the audience bring to those interactions? I’m fascinated by what happens in that space between people. That’s really where communication lives.

Building on that idea, you write that “deafness is still associated with lack, with ignorance, with loss of language.” That _lack_is central to the way others frame your own successes (and so many others) — as a “miraculous” triumph. But when one shifts their perspective even slightly, deafness can also mean _presence_, and _knowledge_, and an _abundance_of language. Can you walk us through how your own thinking about what deafness “means” has shifted with time?

Yes, this is right on! A lot of the “compliments” I’ve gotten over the years are really quite backhanded. “You speak so well, I would never have known you’re deaf” is one example, which we’ve just discussed a bit. Those kinds of remarks can frame deafness as something to “overcome” — usually by assimilating into hearing ways of being and communicating. But that automatically assumes that deafness itself is a deficit, rather than an invitation into other ways to interact and to understand.

Honestly, I’ve always been grateful that I grew up with a family that helped me see that the real thing to “overcome” (if there is one) is an inaccessible world. My parents always gave me a sense of possibility, even if they knew that we’d need to reshape many mainstream environments so that I could participate. I know they learned this attitude from several people we met when I was young: people who worked for the state’s early intervention program, teachers and aides at the deaf preschool I went to, my earliest deaf education specialists, my first speech therapist, my ASL interpreters, and others. The support of all these people helped me to grow up with a sense of my own power, even though I didn’t always know how exactly I should navigate the larger world around me.

When I was young, I do remember noticing how some hearing people could respond to me, sometimes with discomfort or wonder. I didn’t always match their ideas about what deafness “means,” not that many of them had met a deaf person before anyway! I still notice those kinds of responses as an adult, whenever someone wants to talk to me about how I manage to communicate, or even how I manage to drive a car or travel by myself. Now I just laugh when anybody says something like this to me. It’s usually a stranger who doesn’t know me very well.

But as a kid, I didn’t have the same openhandedness that I have now. Since I already had a sense of myself as capable, sometimes I just wanted to show people that I could do certain things. I did want to “speak well,” even when I wasn’t always sure what to make of those compliments, and I wanted to pursue all kinds of other interests I had. I was fortunate to have many opportunities in my life, and I decided I was just going to seize them all. Now I look back and laugh a bit at how stubborn I could be, how hard I sometimes worked to fit in, even when I also went off and did my own thing. I think a big part of learning how to live in the world, whoever you are, is learning how to live on your own terms, and not just in reaction to various tropes that are out there.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I finally started to meet and become friends with some more deaf people, many of them my own age or a little older. These friends had also grown up as part of the “ADA generation,” meaning that we had accessibility services in school and other places, as a result of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. A lot of them had also wrestled with the same questions about assimilating into the hearing world. From them I learned more ways to be deaf, and I started to see the deep connection that’s possible with deafness. I started to play around with different forms of communication in my everyday life, rather than just speaking and lipreading all the time.

I learned more about the power and creativity of ASL, from watching more ASL literature and theater to discovering more of the signs that my smart peers were developing to discuss topics like science and engineering. I started to think about how much I really needed to “prove,” or how much effort I wanted to invest in navigating systems and institutions that weren’t made for me. I started thinking more about balance, how to keep pressing for a more equitable and accessible world while also finding the spaces that sustain me.

Now I really do see deafness as another potent lens for understanding the world, as well as for connecting with others. I also think of it as deeply relational, which is one of my favorite things about this community and experience.

I deeply appreciate any time someone makes the status quo strange — so of course I loved your description of the (often hilariously odd) behaviors of hearingness. In what ways is hearing actually…..super weird???

Also yes to this! Hearing people can be super weird! Making the status quo strange was one of my big goals with this book, and I enjoyed writing those parts, too.

Nowadays I joke that I started becoming an unofficial anthropologist of hearing people and hearing culture from a very young age. There are so many odd behaviors. I remember how the kids in my elementary school would turn and run when (in my perspective) nothing had happened. Soon I learned to deduce that they’d heard the recess bell or the fire alarm, and thus that I should follow along. The fire alarm always looked especially unpleasant to me. As an adult, I still pay close attention when I’m out in public places, like airports or train stations, because the PA announcements aren’t accessible to me, and they often contain important information like delays or gate changes. I have to watch the hearing people around me, and then try to figure out why they’re behaving the way they are. _Okay, they’re all walking over in that direction right now, I ought to follow them._ That’s why I like it when there are multiple modes of conveying announcements, like pop-up notifications on my phone, so I can get that information directly and know what’s going on.

I also tease my hearing friends about how easily distracted they are. When we’re hanging out, sometimes they’ll hear something outside that startles them, all while I’m just sitting there like, “What is it this time?” It really can be amusing to observe how different our perceptions can be, even when we’re sharing (seemingly) the same space. Sometimes these hearing friends do feel less present to me than my deaf friends do, just because they’re so aware of what they hear around them, or because their conversations and reactions fly in unpredictable directions. (On the other hand, I’m sensitive to lighting and visual distractions, aka “visual noise,” so there is that too.)

Also, basic hearing-person things like talking on the phone can seem super weird to me — maybe because I’ve never really done that, but mostly because I have a hard time imagining having a conversation without seeing the other person. Even when they’re possible, invisible conversations don’t seem that fun to me??? I love the intimacy of eye contact and immediate physical presence. Hearing people don’t always look at each other when they talk, and this makes me feel disconnected. Even when I’m speaking out loud to a hearing friend, and I know they can hear what I’m saying, I really want them to look me in the eye when we’re talking. I often tell them so. I want to see their face and their body, to feel their immediate attention. Any sort of multitasking via listening feels odd and disconnected to me, too, even though I can see that it can have its uses!

Finally, it’s interesting to think about how sound can be a form of social etiquette, as the artist Christine Sun Kim has put it. I learned various sound-based social rules when I was growing up, even though I couldn’t hear many of the sounds I was making, except a little bit through my hearing aids. Most of the time, I learned not to slam doors, to stomp too hard around the house, to use my “inside voice,” to avoid clattering my silverware too loudly. But also, many of those sounds felt made-up to me. They just were not real in my world. I could see other people’s reactions to them, so I could technically believe that they existed, yet I honestly didn’t care that much. Many deaf people I meet have a highly developed sense of humor, of the nonsensical and the absurd, and I think our lives in this hearing world are one big reason why.

As I was reading the book, I kept thinking about how every time an interpreter is featured prominently for a televised event — the Democratic convention, say, or a Super Bowl performance — the online discourse has always felt _off_to me. The tone is usually the tone you’d use to praise a kid doing a bold dance they made up themselves, you know what I mean? Like, “THAT INTERPRETER WAS ON FIRE!!” etc. etc. T

here are a few strains of the book colliding here: how ASL is “privatized” and seldom visible in the public sphere (so that when it is, people feel compelled to remark upon it), general infantilization, and a baseline understanding of ASL as a sort of transcription service, not its own deeply embodied form of communication. How do you conceive of this genre of reaction?

This online discourse feels so off to me, too. It really can be so infantilizing. I think general audiences still don’t understand how ASL works as a language, as opposed to visually encoded English or some type of gestural performance. Yet watching an ASL interpreter really is a different kind of access than reading captions on TV. Some deaf people do need direct access to ASL to understand whatever is being expressed, because it’s their primary language, and also because ASL is able to convey other linguistic features like a speaker’s tone and inflection, which don’t come through via English captions alone. You’re right that an interpreter isn’t just a transcription service. The dynamics of interpreting are much more layered.

Over the years, I’ve learned that one good litmus test for “evaluating the general online discourse about ASL” is to ask yourself: _Would it feel weird to make these kinds of exoticizing remarks about a spoken language?_ Whether that’s French or Spanish or Chinese or some other language. Of course, there are all kinds of messed-up language politics about various spoken languages, too, due to race or geopolitics or the English-language superiority that’s often assumed in the U.S., but it’s still a decent question to consider.

I think the general lack of recognition of signed languages is one reason why the online discourse gets weird. When I watch Internet posts and memes about the latest “hot interpreter,” I often see hearing people marveling at how this interpreter was “so expressive” or “so emotional.” Hearing culture often has its own expectations about physical comportment, and many hearing viewers may not understand that, for signed languages, facial expressions are a basic part of grammar. A fluent signer’s “expressiveness” isn’t just visual spectacle or physical excess — it’s a core part of linguistic fluency, even if it can be part of artistic craft too. Using one’s entire body is an important part of getting the message through, even if that’s often read as entertainment by hearing onlookers.

Of course, all of these lines can get blurry, and that’s okay. What is entertainment, what is performance, what is accessibility? I always say that an interpreter is there to provide access first and foremost, but the context also shapes the message. Take the Super Bowl, for instance. The people signing at the Super Bowl each year are actually deaf themselves, not hearing interpreters. I’ve seen that those people prefer to be recognized as ASL performers in that context, because what they’re doing really is an artistic performance, like the singers who are singing the National Anthem.

When we’re talking about a news conference or a large convention, though, the context and purpose are pretty different. The person signing in those settings is often a hearing interpreter (though sometimes they’re a certified deaf interpreter). I think it’s funny when an ASL interpreter goes viral just for interpreting at some mayor’s news conference. This interpreter was just doing their job and interpreting essential information, but that can get lost in the online reactions. The Internet likes to create spectacle.

And then, to be fair, some interpreters _are_ really on fire, like during performances and such. I’ve certainly watched some interpreters and said to myself, “Wow, that was so good.” I think it’s fine to celebrate that — but I also think linguistic knowledge is another part of this conversation! In my life, I’ve had so many odd experiences where I’ve been out in public somewhere, maybe at a big assembly where my interpreter is onstage interpreting. After the event ends, some hearing person will come up and tell my interpreter, “That was so beautiful. You did such a good job.” They usually ignore me, and that feels awkward.

The interpreter and I often laugh once this well-meaning person leaves, because how do they even know enough to gauge whether the interpreting was good or not? They don’t know the language. Not all interpreters are equally skilled. I’ve noticed that signed languages can be encoded as “beautiful” or “mesmerizing” in general hearing culture, even when they’re also ordinary ways to converse or convey information. It’s like when my deaf friends and I are out signing in public, gossiping about something dumb or crass, and a hearing person comes up and wants to tell us that our signing is so beautiful.

I think sometimes these hearing people are just trying to connect, but I’d also feel strange if I tried to proclaim an opinion on how well someone interpreted something into a language I don’t know. Maybe I can appreciate that there was interpreting provided in that situation, or maybe I take it as an opportunity to try to learn a little more — but I also know that I’m not the authority to say whether that interpreter “slayed it” or not. In the end, I think that’s what deaf people can find off-putting about this wider “interpreter-related” discourse: that it can center hearing people and their perceptions of language, while continuing to overlook the things we’ve known for a long time. It also tends to center hearing interpreters, depending on the situation, instead of deaf people who do use ASL as our primary language every day. We do get tired of those dynamics sometimes.

I’ve had some good conversations with hearing friends over the years where I explain some of these things about interpreting, and then they say, _oh, yes, that makes sense_. And then hopefully they can start to think about what it means to provide meaningful access in more different situations, instead of only occasionally or as part of some Very Visible Spectacle. I think it’s healthy to have these conversations. It’d be wonderful to have interpreting available in more different places, just as an ordinary matter of course, and also as part of normalizing signed as well as spoken languages in our society.

Your description of the experience of crosstalk syndrome (and the socializing with others who’d had cochlear implants) made me think of the older people in my life who I’ve watched slowly recede from dinner conversation as their hearing ability has declined — and how, instead of learning to read lips, they just get frustrated with their bad hearing aids. It reminds me of how everyone, of every age, of every hearing ability, in every vocation, would be really well served by lipreading skills and attentiveness to direct speaking.

Why is there such resistance to thinking in this more holistic, inclusive, universal-design sort of way? (I keep thinking about how we always want to create technology to “solve” otherness instead of just….all getting better at creating environments that accommodate otherness????)

I’ve met so many people who are abashed by their own hearing loss, or who haven’t yet figured out how to say what they need. They hide it, they don’t want to talk about it, they get grumpy about their hearing aids, and, yes, their social lives can get smaller, just because they’re immersed in a world that really does prioritize speaking and hearing. It’s such a widespread issue, and in my view it’s not entirely because of hearing loss itself. We have technologies now that can help amplify auditory information, and that can be helpful for a lot of people, but tech is far from the only fix. We have a lot to gain from more flexible environments that accommodate more different bodies and minds, as well as more awareness about how to communicate in ways besides “typical” auditory language.

I still see a lot of stigma out there: people I meet are still afraid of the word “disability,” and they’re afraid of acknowledging when they have a disability and may benefit from some sort of accommodation, too. I think that’s one huge barrier. When we grow up in a world that holds up “able-bodiedness” as a norm, it’s sometimes tough for people to accept themselves (and their personal needs) as their bodies and minds change over time. Sometimes technology and medical intervention can put the onus on the individual person to “resolve” their disability, rather than prompting wider discussion about how larger social structures and cultural-behavioral patterns also do shape our experiences of accessibility. In a very individualist culture like we have in the U.S., it can be hard to ask others to shift their behavior with you in mind. Yet that’s part of moving towards a communication environment that is more collectivist and empathetic.

I personally think it would be amazing if more people learned sign language. It’s a rich way to communicate regardless, and it can also be a valuable accessibility tool, including for older people with hearing loss. But as I’ve mentioned, there are various cultural misconceptions that can devalue or exoticize nonspoken modes of communication, or that can view them as “other.” I hope we’re slowly getting over that. I also understand that ASL isn’t a “cure-all” solution. It may not be accessible to particular people, for all kinds of reasons, and I know it can feel intimidating or impractical to learn a new language later in life, especially if your friends and relatives don’t know how to sign, either. I’ve always admired the later-deafened people I meet who do throw themselves into this new way of living and being, since I know it’s not easy.

Overall, though, we also have a lot of opportunities to learn more flexible ways of communicating and getting our message across to others. That might be learning about how to shape our environments and communication patterns so lipreading is a little easier, or pulling in services that provide captioning, et cetera. I’ve found that it takes a certain self-confidence to ask for what you need in this way, and also a certain persistence to keep reminding other people to keep being more accommodating and flexible. That, too, can get exhausting, and I’ve had an easier time in environments where my friends can hold _each other_ accountable, so that it’s not just me asking for change. We need to be more willing to take responsibility as a group, instead of assuming that “everyone can understand” or that what we’ve said is “self-evident.”

Yet I think you’ve pinpointed something important with how you’ve asked this question: we can have a hard time designing our interactions in this more holistic, universal-design way _because_ we can expect there to be some definite solution. Push a button, take a pill, use this piece of tech, go to the doctor, plug in this new thing, and then boom, move along and have your rapid-fire conversations largely as before. But accessibility can require us to be a little slower, a little more methodical in how we think about the other people who are in the room with us, about what works in this space and what doesn’t. Accessibility is an ongoing process, and one size really doesn’t fit all. I think these holistic approaches require a flexible and patient way of thinking that can be at odds with our culture’s desire to “fix” disability, or at least to move past it in some way.

When you were young, your mom gave you a copy of _Deaf Like Me_, first published in 1979, and told you: “It’s bound to feel outdated. But it changed how I thought about these things.”

Deaf Like Me_is written from the perspective of a parent of a deaf person, and _Articulate_is written from the perspective of, well,_you_— but in twenty years, what do you hope someone will be able to take from your book? What do you hope it will allow them to understand not just about being a deaf person in the ‘90s and early 2000s, but just…being a person in general?

When I was writing _Articulate_ , I was so aware that this book might impact readers in different ways. One of those imagined audiences was hearing parents of deaf children, who might be in a similar situation as my own parents were in 1990, when they’d just found out that I was deaf and were wondering what the heck they should do.

My mom went to the library that summer and read this book _Deaf Like Me_ , and it convinced her that she had to learn sign language. Some of my earliest draft material for this book was about _Deaf Like Me_. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’ve grown into someone who loves to read, and who lives among the pages of books in many ways, but also about how I got this life because of the early exposure to language that my parents gave me. I’ve always felt like that’s a cool testament to how books can change people’s minds, even the way they live in the world.

So I’d love if my own book encourages others to learn ASL, too, whether they are hearing parents of deaf children or whether they have other deaf friends or relatives or even acquaintances. And beyond that, I’d love if it encourages them to embrace some new form of communication in their lives, or to be more forthright about whatever they might need to communicate. I think discussing how language _feels_ to each of us, and why, can be really generative in helping us connect in these more flexible and adaptive ways you’ve asked me about. These personal relationships to language can feel so real, no matter what time we live in.

In twenty years, I hope we’ve somehow arrived at the point where we’re incorporated more different accommodations and language options into our society. With everything happening politically in 2026, that sometimes feels like an overly optimistic hope to me, but it’s still there. I’d love if my book ended up feeling dated in that way!

If you'd like to join one of the best comments sections on the internet — plus get access to the addictive and useful subscriber-only discussion, the honking monthly links & recs round-ups, all paywalled essay content, and the weekly collection of "Things I've Read and Loved" including the Just Trust Me.....

Become a Paid Subscriber

And if you're not in a place to subscribe but still want to support the newsletter....forward this (or any other edition) to someone you think would like it. Social media is broken, and algorithms cannot be trusted....but word of mouth (or word-of-email, word-of-texts) still works wonders. Your contributions, monetary or otherwise, make this newsletter sustainable, and I'm so grateful for all of you.

Did you like this post?

Share this post with someone who might enjoy it.

San Francisco, CA 94103

Email was sent to spence.burleigh@gmail.com

Download the app - Google Play | App Store