Kirjahaku

The Sixth Volume in the Gallaudet Classics in Deaf Studies SeriesGeorge M. Teegarden (1852-1936) taught at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf for 48 years, established the printing department, and also served as the first editor of the school's magazine. Despite these significant contributions, his greatest gift to deaf people was his skill as a writer and poet who was deaf, as readers will discover in When I Am Dead: The Writings of George M. Teegarden. Editor Raymond Luczak selected Teegarden's prose in When I Am Dead from several books, including Raindrop, and Stories, Old and New. Noting that these stories were never written for hearing readers, Luczak marvels at Teegarden's ability to write English prose that the ASL-familiar reader would find incredibly easy to transliterate. By employing a rich blend of original stories and revisions of fables and myths, Teegarden taught his students the importance of improving their reading and writing skills to outfit them "for the battle of life." He produced a body of work that Luczak characterizes as "a breath of fresh air: quick, painless, and usually told with a sense of wonder." Luczak's choice of poems came from Teegarden's self-published volume Vagrant Verses, a summation of his affection for Gallaudet College, the Deaf community, and all deaf people. The eponymous poem "When I Am Dead" articulates concisely the beliefs that directed Teegarden's life of service: "When I am dead, I hope to beRemembered--this is true--Not for my wit or vanitiesBut what I did for you."

"Oh, why can't the deaf community be more like a family?" is the plaint of a character in Raymond Luczak's title play Whispers of a Savage Sort. It also goes far in characterizing the main thread that runs through his remarkable collection of work offered in this new volume. Whispers of a Savage Sort and Other Plays about the Deaf American Experience presents a progression of plays that depict Deaf people in situations well-known by the community's members. Written to be signing-driven, these plays feature Deaf characters from the various strata of Deaf society. Each play centers on different yet equally familiar issues. Snooty brings to life the difficulties of surviving the social pecking order in a deaf residential school. The main character's only escape is a rich fantasy life in which he is in control. Doogle confronts its characters with the intrusion of technological communication devices parallel to the virtually forced intimacy of such a small, close community. Brought into stark focus by the specter of AIDS, Love in My Veins explores how trust, betrayal, and ultimately forgiveness can transform a Deaf couple's love for each other in a Deaf community. The collection's eponymous Whispers of a Savage Sort reveals the relentless damage that rumor and innuendo can do to a diverse group of Deaf individuals. The emotions, identities, and consequences created by Luczak in these dramas illuminate the Deaf American community in fascinating detail rarely seen in any medium today.

Spontaneous combustion occurs when Bill, a forty-year-old barista and a failed poet, meets James, a disabled factory worker and a daddy hunk, at an OctoBear Dance. For six months they share weekends of incredible passion at James’s house up north in the country. Winter has never seemed hotter in their flannel sheets. But on the first day of spring James abruptly informs Bill over the phone that it’s not going to work out and hangs up. No further explanation: just the static of silence. Feeling haunted like Djuna Barnes while she wrote her novel Nightwood in the 1930s, Bill searches for answers in his recollections of James and others who’d departed too early from his life. When he does discover why James left, the answer comes from a mysterious stranger with secrets of his own.

Join me on a journey to the unspoiled forests of Upper Michigan..."A long time ago young men wishing to be tallscaled the mast of my octopus armsand scanned the horizon of Lake Superiorfor a glimmer of Canada. Usually we were cut down ..." For many of those who've lived there, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan can seem like a magical place because nature there feels so potent and, at times, full of mystery. After having grown up there, Raymond Luczak can certainly attest to its mythical powers. In Chlorophyll, he reimagines Lake Superior and its environs as well as his houseplants as a variety of imaginary and historical characters. "Ghosts dress in only gray and white.This is how they camouflage their volcanic selves. Lake Superior is bottled with them. You can't see them but they move like fish ..." "In Raymond Luczak's Chlorophyll, the devastating natural beauty of Michigan's Upper Peninsula is imbued with passions its reticent human inhabitants are loathe to express. Trees, lakes, and stones air their infatuations, their grudges, their mythologies and griefs. Through this forest of the otherwise unsaid, we catch glimpses of a speaker who knows there is no line to blur between 'person' and 'nature.'" -Emily Van Kley, author of Arrhythmia and The Rust and the Cold "Spring is a girl who's cried all nightonly to find that morning easily forgivesthe coldness of him having left herstranded among the thicket of evergreens ..." "Giving voice to the natural world, Raymond Luczak allows the rocks, trees, lakes, insects, and flowers that are part of flora and fauna of the region to speak for themselves, and they remind us that we are human, living in a more than human world." -William Reichard, author of Our Delicate Barricades Downed and The Night Horse: New and Selected Poems Raymond Luczak grew up in the Upper Peninsula. He is the author and editor of numerous titles such as Compassion, Michigan: The Ironwood Stories. His book once upon a twin: poems was chosen as a U.P. Notable Book for 2021. He resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Learn more at www.RaymondLuczak.comFrom Modern History Press (www.ModernHistoryPress.com)

Join me on a journey to the unspoiled forests of Upper Michigan..."A long time ago young men wishing to be tallscaled the mast of my octopus armsand scanned the horizon of Lake Superiorfor a glimmer of Canada. Usually we were cut down ..." For many of those who've lived there, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan can seem like a magical place because nature there feels so potent and, at times, full of mystery. After having grown up there, Raymond Luczak can certainly attest to its mythical powers. In Chlorophyll, he reimagines Lake Superior and its environs as well as his houseplants as a variety of imaginary and historical characters. "Ghosts dress in only gray and white.This is how they camouflage their volcanic selves. Lake Superior is bottled with them. You can't see them but they move like fish ..." "In Raymond Luczak's Chlorophyll, the devastating natural beauty of Michigan's Upper Peninsula is imbued with passions its reticent human inhabitants are loathe to express. Trees, lakes, and stones air their infatuations, their grudges, their mythologies and griefs. Through this forest of the otherwise unsaid, we catch glimpses of a speaker who knows there is no line to blur between 'person' and 'nature.'" -Emily Van Kley, author of Arrhythmia and The Rust and the Cold "Spring is a girl who's cried all nightonly to find that morning easily forgivesthe coldness of him having left herstranded among the thicket of evergreens ..." "Giving voice to the natural world, Raymond Luczak allows the rocks, trees, lakes, insects, and flowers that are part of flora and fauna of the region to speak for themselves, and they remind us that we are human, living in a more than human world." -William Reichard, author of Our Delicate Barricades Downed and The Night Horse: New and Selected Poems Raymond Luczak grew up in the Upper Peninsula. He is the author and editor of numerous titles such as Compassion, Michigan: The Ironwood Stories. His book once upon a twin: poems was chosen as a U.P. Notable Book for 2021. He resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Learn more at www.RaymondLuczak.comFrom Modern History Press (www.ModernHistoryPress.com)

For over a decade, Raymond Luczak, author of Silence Is a Four-Letter Word: On Art & Deafness, has been interviewing Deaf and hard of hearing artists and their allies about their creative and arts accessibility work. This volume features over 70 people sharing what it means to be an artist who happens to be different. "When I was little, I never really quite questioned all those millions of sound norms I'd inhabited." -Christine Sun Kim, Non-Traditional Composer With the vast bulk culled from his nine years of interviewing artists for SIGNews, Luczak has added 19 new interviews that offer contrasting views against historical snapshots still relevant to artists everywhere. These lively interviews provide new insights while bringing the reader closer to understanding the extraordinary talents of the participants. "It was important to go through that period of rage and rebellion, but is it worth sustaining forever?" -Jeremy Quiroga, Sculptor and ASL Poet Interviewees include: Leah Angstman * Robert Arnold * Jill Beebout * Deborah M. Blumenson, Ph.D. * Alex Chu * Warren N. Churchill * Sue Clancy * Adrean Clark * Joe Clark * John Lee Clark * Ryan Commerson * Bill Creswell * Perrine Dailey * Jules Dameron * Ronald Dans * Jennifer Dans-Willey * Linda Dratell * Mark Drolsbaugh * Patti Durr * Bex Freund * Frank Gallimore * Oleg Golovushkin * Antoine Hunter * Matthew Jenkins * Ilya Kaminsky * Russell Kane * Missy Keast * John Kinstler * Christine Sun Kim * Arthur Luhn * Kellie Martin * Rachel C. Mazique * Rosie Mazique * Dan McDougall * Lewis Merkin * Shanny Mow * Louis Neethling * Michael Northen * Patty O. * Sharon Pajka * Andr Pellerin * David H. Pierce * Michael Pimental * Jeremy Quiroga * Mary Rappazzo * Stacia Rice * Kristen Ringman * Nancy Rourke * Steve Sandy * Orkid Sassouni * Brian Selznick * Ethan Sinnott * Louise Stern * Shoshannah Stern * Dawn Stoyanoff * Nick Sturley * Charlie Swinbourne * Pia Taavila-Borsheim * Rosa Lee Timm * Madan Vasishta * Vanessa Vaughan * Anna & Sean Virnig * Robert Walker * Cynthia Weitzel * Michele Westfall * Robbie Wilde * Morgan Grayce Willow * Pamela E. Witcher * Robert Wittig.

Ghosts are everywhere.The Deaf community today doesn't seem to be what it used to be, so a small group of people must decide whether to sell the last Deaf club in America. As its board of trustees reflects on what it means to be Deaf, a few ghosts return to share stories of what it was like when Deaf clubs truly mattered: Mabel Hubbard Bell, the wife of the Deaf community's nemesis Alexander Graham Bell; Nellie Zabel Willhite, the first Deaf woman to earn a pilot's license; Olof Hanson, the first Deaf architect in America; and George Veditz, a charismatic activist who defended the Deaf community's right to sign. Raymond Luczak offers a compelling look into the Deaf community then and now.Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of over 20 books, including The Kinda Fella I Am and A Babble of Objects. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

No one gives you a manual on how to be a Deaf gay man. Raymond Luczak shares stories from his days growing up as a Deaf gay man in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

When Raymond Luczak was growing up deaf in a hearing Catholic family of nine children, his mother shared conflicting stories about having had a miscarriage after—or possibly around—the time he was conceived. As an elegy to his lost twin, this book asks: If he had a twin, just how different would his life have been?

In this collection of essays, Raymond Luczak once again offers readers powerful and deeply personal reflections on his experiences as a Deaf gay man. He begins his journey with the printed word where lipreading is not required, and discovers a family of sorts through the writings of Walt Whitman and others; he ventures deeper into the queer community with thoughts on ageism, disability, and radical faeries. Luczak explores the many nuances within the Deaf community and the audist attitudes of hearing people, particularly in the media, and takes a detour into ASL gloss poetry. He speculates on what the Deaf community will look like a century from now and ends with a long bike ride that celebrates the ongoing questions of being a Deaf gay man.

In Far from Atlantis, Raymond Luczak makes use of traditional poetic forms to tell the stories of two vastly different worlds: the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which often looks like an island on the map, and the fabled island of Atlantis. The poems in the collection are rooted in the natural world, with the power of water as a means for escaping the cruelty and tedium of an ableist society. While recounting his troubled childhood as the only deaf person in a large hearing family, Luczak aligns himself with mythological, monstrous, and superhuman beings who, like him, exist on the margins. The narratives invoked and the worlds created in these poems are both autoethnographic and speculative, and include figures lost to history like Lucy Frances Fitzhigh Hooe and Frances Peterson, along with 1970s pop culture icons like the Six Million Dollar Man and Wonder Woman.