Reviewer Rebecca Foster Interviews Jessica Kirkness, Author of The House with All the Lights On
“The beauty of sign language—like most languages—depends on the user. Just like in spoken English, there are some people who are gifted communicators or highly eloquent, and others for whom language is just a utility. Much in the way that hearing people have unique voices or patterns of intonation, Deaf people have their own signing styles. I suppose it’s a bit like a visual accent.’’—Jessica Kirkness, The House with All the Lights On
There is a language that sounds like one hand clapping. See below.
You explore the contradiction between deafness as a disability and it offering a community and an identity. Your grandparents seemed to experience it as both a positive and a negative at different points. When you look back on your grandfather’s life, do you think of his deafness as a limitation or a gift?
I’m not sure it’s wholly one or the other. It would be disingenuous to suggest there weren’t limitations that stemmed from my grandparents’ deafness. Growing up Deaf in a hearing world presented its fair share of challenges. But this isn’t the same as suggesting the d/Deaf person has a deficit.
The idea that deafness is something terrible that needs to be fixed is often the dominant medical view, but for many Deaf people, deafness is a critical part of their identity— something that makes them them. I think my grandfather was proud of his Deaf identity but also struggled with shame and with access to information, among other things. His deafness was often misunderstood as a tragedy, but he certainly didn’t see it that way, and nor did I. He was part of a close-knit community of people with a rich culture, language, and history.
For me personally, Grandpa’s deafness was a gift. Perhaps that’s because I see deafness as inseparable from who he was. It informed so much of how he saw and engaged with the world—the ways he used his body to communicate, his astute observations of people and life that came from a highly visual culture. He taught me an awful lot about difference—about the value of diversity. This isn’t to sugarcoat the many barriers he faced in the world, though. They were there all through his life, and I saw them clearly and often with rage or great sadness.
I was fascinated by the notion of “Deaf gain”—that the loss of one sense in some way makes the others keener. Can you give examples of how this played out in your family or in others you observed or spoke with?
Absolutely. My grandparents were highly visual and tactile people. Deaf people often refer to themselves as “The People of the Eye” and it’s an apt descriptor. Because sign is a visual-spatial language, Deaf people are some of the most attentive to visual stimuli, especially in their peripheral vision. Because of this, light was really important in our household—too dim and my grandparents couldn’t read our lips or our signs. Being backlit was also a problem because it cast shadows over our faces and made communication difficult.
Facial expression is a huge part of sign languages, and my grandparents were highly attuned to changes in our faces or body language. They were watchful, observant people, and as a child, I was often shocked by their uncanny ability to “read” me.
Deaf gain also refers to the idea that there are distinct benefits that arise from being deaf. Sign language, Deaf culture, and close-knit community are often thought to be examples of Deaf Gain. Sign language, for example, can be used in large or noisy spaces with ease; in a nightclub, or a loud pub, hearing people have to shout to be heard. I’ve often been out with Deaf friends in these kinds of places and experience Deaf Gain by using sign language and carrying on our conversations with ease. When I’m out with my grandmother at the shopping center, I can be meters away from her and check if she wants bread or milk without having to yell or walk back towards her. As long as she’s facing me, we can have conversations in sign from miles away.
A dichotomy that really struck me in the book was that between technology and art: the one so enormously helpful to daily life for the deaf, and the other sometimes less accessible (in the case of music) but just as vital. What is the interplay between technology and the arts, particularly for the disabled?
There were many technologies used and loved in our home. My grandparents had a doorbell that used a flashing light to alert them to a caller at the door, and their alarm clock also had a globe that would flash when it was time to wake up. These were much-loved devices!
As for art and music, my grandparents were very much interested in both. I was a very musical child, and for a time, I was self-conscious about sharing that part of myself with them. As I grew up, I realised my grandparents’ engagement with music was just different to mine. My grandpa loved military marching bands and many of his favourite films were musicals. My grandmother adores choral performances, and she still watches Songs of Praise, a British television show where choirs perform songs of worship across the country. I became really fascinated by the work of Deaf musicians as a result of their interest, and went to visit Music and the Deaf, a charity that provides musical education and performances to deaf children. It’s run by professional musicians, many of whom are culturally Deaf and use sign language to communicate. There are so many Deaf raves and dances, music festivals, theatre productions, and arts organisations around the world. Pop culture, even music, can be really important to people in Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.
You describe sign language (Auslan, in particular) as being cinematographic in nature and reflecting people’s individual styles. I was interested to learn that as I think most assume that a signed language would be formulaic. Can you tell us a little more about how language and personality interact?
The beauty of sign language—like most languages—depends on the user. Just like in spoken English, there are some people who are gifted communicators or highly eloquent, and others for whom language is just a utility. Much in the way that hearing people have unique voices or patterns of intonation, Deaf people have their own signing styles. I suppose it’s a bit like a visual accent.
Both of my grandparents were very theatrical in the ways they communicated, even when they used spoken language. I’m a competent signer, but my grandparents were rich storytellers, and it was a joy to see them create images I’d never be able to replicate with my hands.
I think it’s a really common assumption that sign languages are formulaic, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m always marveling at how clever sign language poetry and storytelling can be—how much individual and cultural choice can inflect the meaning made. There are subtleties and nuances that outsiders to the language might not be privy to, but the more you learn, the harder you realize it is!
Sign language is a rich and complex language that has suffered from hearing prejudices and assumptions over the years. It’s a language that has been banned, denigrated, considered animalistic and primitive, and that misconception has caused enormous harm. Since Covid, I think people are paying much more attention to sign language. Having interpreters on our screens for all those years has shifted something in our cultural landscape for the better, and hopefully many more people will consider learning the language and experiencing it for themselves.
I was so surprised when you mentioned (and then visited) Mary Hare School: I live in Newbury and have attended events at the campus’ Arlington Arts Centre, but didn’t realize it was world-famous! You have misgivings in that the school still operates a policy of oralism. What, in your mind, would be the ideal educational method to equip deaf people for life?
I have enormous respect for the staff and students at Mary Hare. My visit there was invaluable for the book and for me personally. My grandparents’ schools were spoken of frequently in stories throughout my childhood, and travelling to the UK to visit them meant a lot to them and to me. Mary Hare does amazing work and produces incredible academic and social results. There’s a huge push in Disability circles to phase out specialized education in favor of mainstreaming. But for d/Deaf and hard of hearing children, this is a little different. Many schools for the Deaf are closing, which is a tragedy in my view—a view I know is shared by many in the broader Deaf community.
One of the really difficult things many deaf and hard-of-hearing children navigate is a lack of access to information. In mainstream school settings, deaf kids often have inadequate support or struggle to be fully included in lessons. In places like Mary Hare, the specific needs of d/Deaf children are catered for entirely. They have onsite audiologists, speech pathologists, and a specialized FM system for children to plug into so they can access the teacher’s voice through their listening devices (hearing aids or cochlear implants).
The educational philosophy at the school has changed a lot over the years. Sign language is no longer banned on the premises as it once was. This was a widespread policy in deaf schools around the world. Mary Hare uses English in the classroom because they want to prepare students for the hearing world. I can understand this choice, but at heart I’m a strong supporter of bilingualism. Every child is different and has different needs, of course, but having a blended approach to communication means that everyone is included, and nobody gets left behind.
For some kids, forcing them to adopt spoken or “oral”/ auditory-verbal methods of communication can be damaging and can also result in language delays. If their listening devices aren’t giving them enough support, there can be problems in adopting language, which has huge implications for social, emotional, and cognitive development. Most Deaf people, and supporters of bilingualism, would argue that giving a child ANY language is vital in those early years. Giving them both gives the child choice, and plenty of research is showing support for the many advantages of bilingualism. Deaf children of Deaf parents, for example, outperform their deaf peers who are born to hearing parents by significant margins. Because they are given language from birth, they don’t suffer the language deprivation many others face while they’re learning to adjust to listening devices or learn spoken language in this critical developmental stage.
Do you think of your book as embodying your grandfather’s archive of research into Deafness? Or does it still have a physical existence? What are your plans for it?
That’s a great question! The book is absolutely my way of collating and distilling all my grandfather taught me—of honouring his legacy and his mind. But there’s a lot of material that didn’t make the cut or hasn’t yet found a home.
I’ve still got a physical archive of all my grandfather’s newspaper clippings, articles, maps, photographs, and handwritten jottings sitting in a cabinet at home. It’s terribly sentimental of me, but I can’t bring myself to part with it. For a while now I’ve been meaning to contact the British Deaf Association to pass on some of the material, because I think it’d be of great interest to them. Thanks for reminding me to do so!
Possibly the most beautiful (and occasionally peculiar) material my grandpa left behind was his archive of home movies—footage he took on his hand-held camcorder. He filmed all sorts of events from our family life, and was also a train and boat enthusiast, so there’s hours of that kind of stuff in the archive. I’ve thought about the possibility of collating some of it to capture his point of view and the many things that caught his interest. Because Deaf culture is so visual, I’d love to make some sort of film or hybrid work that brings his perspective into focus. Perhaps a project for the future …
Rebecca Foster
