THE QUIET EAR: An Investigation of Missing Sound, by Raymond Antrobus
In his first book of nonfiction, the poet Raymond Antrobus delivers an insightful, bighearted memoir that skillfully interrogates his own experience — and the experience of a multitude of others — of being deaf in today’s world. Both expansive and precise, “The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound” manages to be many things at once: a coming-of-age memoir of moving between the orbits of hearing and nonhearing individuals, a nuanced discussion of the ways that race and deafness intersect, and a cultural appraisal of significant deaf figures in sports, literature, cinema and more. Antrobus, the author of three volumes of poetry and two children’s books, lucidly braids all of this into an effortless, often lyrical account.
Antrobus was born in London in 1986, to a Jamaican father and a white mother. His lack of hearing wasn’t diagnosed until he was 7, when his mother realized he had no idea that the phone was ringing. Antrobus writes: “Leaving the clinic with hearing aids for the first time, I noticed that everything had language. The door gasped when it opened. The street flashed and blared with pigeons flapping and crowded city traffic. … At school, everyone had questions for me. What’s in your ears? I didn’t want to tell them I was deaf like a ski slope. I would say, ‘These are my plastic ears.’”
As the narrative progresses, the reader meets a string of teachers, mentors and role models who helped Antrobus find his footing in the hearing and nonhearing worlds. Some left lasting impressions. “I was first taught to sign in a small classroom with one window in constant shade,” he recalls. “Whatever weeds and vines reached the glass starkly stared. I remember it as an atmosphere of quiet shame.” Antrobus’s British Sign Language teacher, a “woman with long grayish-blond hair,” called him “Toast Boy” because of an early misunderstanding, and spoke only in sign. “When she wanted the attention of the class she banged on the table and made a loud wailing noise.”
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