I Sign, Therefore I Am E-Book

Juhana Salonen

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 200

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

I Sign, Therefore I Am is the powerful story of a deaf young man struggling with his identity, and of his growth into a sign language user who is proud of his culture. Being the deaf child of hearing parents and the only deaf person in my early surroundings: these were the foundations for the identity crisis I underwent in my youth. The crisis could have had a tragic end, but fortunately in my case it did not. It took years of searching, however, to finally grow into my identity as a deaf person and to adopt Finnish Sign Language as my mother tongue. I wrote this book to share my life experiences with members of any linguistic or cultural minority. This is a highly topical issue in society, as such minorities are increasingly in the limelight. Many automatically assume that minorities have it bad, and that their members deviate - in a negative sense - from the majority population also in other ways. This book offers excellent opportunities for seeing the world through a deaf person´s eyes and for correcting misguided views. At the same time, it provides compelling evidence of the benefits of deafness and sign language for both the deaf and the population at large.

Leseprobe

Acknowledgements

There are not enough signs or words in the world for me to thank those who have supported me throughout my life. First and foremost, I am deeply indebted to my mother, Sisko-Margit Syväoja. She has contributed to this book her version of my coming-of-age story. I am particularly grateful to all my sign language friends, who have been incredibly supportive. I won’t name specific names; I am referring to the sign language community as a whole. Great thanks are also due to my family (my wife and Titta), who have always been there to support the completion of my book’s translation process, my late father, my extended family, and all those who have observed my life at close range.

Jussi Rinta-Hoiska created most of the photo illustrations for the book. Hats off to him for this unique photography project, during which I literally got to look back in time and comb through memories – some of them painful. A picture is worth a thousand words. Thanks also to Noora Karjalainen, Antti Kronqvist, Teemu Lipasti-Sjöroos (with car) and Olga Green, who appear in the pictures. Assistance in arranging the photography sessions came from, among others, Juha Leppänen, Mattokymppi in Jyväskylä, Sveitsin lukio upper secondary school in Hyvinkää and the Hyvinkää Hospital.

Special thanks to Tiina Särkkä, who created the layout of the book, including visual elements pertaining to deaf culture. Nor must I forget Eva Malkki, who translated my Finnish original work into English, and my advance reader Gavin Lilley, whose contributions have been invaluable. Similarly, thanks are due to the advance readers of the Finnish original (Annemari Ahoste, Kirsimarja Alatalo, Liisa Kauppinen, Arttu Liikamaa, Lea Nieminen, Mika Rasila, Iiris Rautiainen, Janina Rintala, Olivia Timmermans and Outi Toura-Jensen), whose insightful comments helped me fine-tune the book, and to Marjo-Leea Alapuranen, who checked my references to bibliography in English. Thank you to my colleagues Danny De Weerdt, Tommi Jantunen, Laura Kanto, Hanna Niutanen-Di Renzo and Elina Tapio, who commented on translations of sign language-related terminology. I am also indebted to my employer, the Sign Language Centre of the University of Jyväskylä, for the support I have received in writing this book. Finally, thank you to all those who have contributed financially to the translation of this book: an anonymous donor, Evantia, Finnish Association of the Deaf, Mokoma Oy, TulkkausILONA Oy, Tulkkauspalvelut Mireal Oy, VAMLAS Supporting Foundation for Children and Youth with Disabilities, the Via Sign Language Sector Cooperative and VIPARO Oy.

Contents

For the Reader

Part I

A Happy Childhood

Infancy

School and Leisure

Our Child is Deaf

Part II

Surprises in Adolescence

Puberty Changes Everything

A Deaf Young Person with Growing Pains – from a Mother’s Perspective

Part III

The Only Way Is Up

Upper Secondary School and Moving to Helsinki

Finding and Building an Identity

Our Deaf Young Man Will Be All Right

Part IV

Further Identity-Building

Student Life à la Jyväskylä

Study Progress

Gap Year, 2009–2010

Return to Jyväskylä and Graduation

A Coming-of-Age Story with a Happy Ending

Part V

Deaf and Proud

Victory Through Adversity

APPENDIX

An Exploratory Journey into Deafness and Sign Language

Deaf Gain: Benefits of Deafness

Sign Gain: Benefits of Sign Language

This book is dedicated to

the sign language community,

from which I have drawn and continue

to draw so much strength.

“What matters deafness of the ears

when the mind hears? The one true deafness,

the incurable deafness, is that of the mind .”

Victor Hugo, writing to Ferdinand Berthier (25/11/1845)

For the Reader

I have been deaf from birth. One who cannot hear speech, sweet birdsong, musical melodies or other subtleties of the world of sound. But what else does being deaf imply? How many people consider it or try to find out? Living with one foot in the hearing world and one in the deaf has led me to develop a dualistic identity. Since childhood, my relationship with being deaf has undergone diverse stages. I have viewed it with disgust, shame and loathing. Approaching adolescence, I possessed no tenable identity upon which to build my self-image and worldview. There were times I longed for the sense of hearing, to perceive the wonders of sound. I have also felt I might be more highly valued in society as a hearing person. Later, having found my true self, I have rejoiced – indeed jumped up and down in near hysterics – in truly recognizing myself as deaf. I have learned to ignore society’s attitudes and values and to draw strength from the deaf community. In this way, I have lived a double life.

I wanted to write this book to openly disclose the conflicts I have faced in relation to being deaf. The journey I have traversed has taken its toll. This, especially, is why I had to share my experiences. First and foremost, I describe what it is like to live as a deaf person, in a minority among the majority population. There are many groups in the same situation: linguistic minorities, Roma, Sámi, immigrants and people with disabilities, not forgetting those who are unwillingly marginalized for a variety of reasons. Ultimately, though, all individuals are equally valuable in themselves.

I was first inspired to write this book in the spring of 2002. At the time, I was playing fourth-division floorball in the Espoo Oilers reserve team. I still remember the moment when another player, having spent some time observing me, remarked that I should one day write an autobiography. That player was the now-celebrated film director Dome Karukoski. The idea stayed in the back of my mind for years, until in late 2006 I decided to write a short piece on my life for the magazine Visiot, aimed at young deaf readers. It brought me a lot of positive feedback for my courage and openness. It steeled my resolve to write a book, although it still took a few kicks up the backside to put it into action. In the autumn of 2010, at a national youth sign language convention in Turku, I attended a lecture by the rapper Signmark on his personal path to success. At the end of the lecture everyone was handed a green piece of paper to raise up simultaneously, in a metaphoric call for us all to fulfil our dreams now rather than later. My final decision to write came in the spring of 2013, when a deaf friend organized a small seminar in which participants were asked to share and encourage each other’s ambitions. My dream became known to all, and it was my book.

The primary aim of this book is to provide readers who are foreign to deaf culture and sign language with an inside perspective into the world of deaf people. According to the British deaf scholar Dr Paddy Ladd, the deaf community should make an effort to awaken the general population to the fascinating aspects of our culture and language, because they are unique and have enough “sex appeal” to arouse the interest and curiosity of hearing people. This is my objective. My book also looks at some of the scientific research on the special characteristics of sign language and deafness. I sign, therefore I am. Finnish Sign Language has given me the opportunity and the ability to feel alive. Many of my thoughts, feelings, passions and enthusiasms have been engendered exclusively in sign language. I only realized this after years of uncertainty.

Where it all begins

Part I

A Happy Childhood

1. Infancy

I decided to enter this wondrous world on a Sunday evening in November, two weeks before my due date. My parents suspected early on that I wasn’t reacting normally to the soundscape. My mother recalls the paediatrician testing my hearing at the six-month check-up by stepping around us and ringing a small bell behind me. I turned my head in the direction of the doctor’s movement and so they concluded that I had heard the sound, although of course an infant would be drawn to the doctor’s movements, even while blissfully unaware of the bell.

My grandma, having considerable experience as the mother of a respectable brood of eight, quickly realized that my hearing wasn’t normal. As soon as she had expressed her doubts, my parents took me for further tests. I was eventually diagnosed as deaf at the age of twenty months – much later than children should be diagnosed, really. Initially, the physicians were reluctant to believe it. Deafness was not well known in Finnish society in the early 1980s, because it was very seldom in the public eye. For my parents, it came as a complete shock. How could they, as Finnish speakers, learn to adapt to a deaf child who could neither hear nor speak? It is a frighteningly challenging situation for any parent who has never used sign language. I started sessions with rehabilitation counsellors by order of ear specialists. We visited the Hearing Centre in Helsinki numerous times, and our lives became a continuum of travel between Hyvinkää and the capital. My hearing was tested and retested, hearing apparatuses were purchased and earpieces made to measure; batteries were bought and everything was fitted and tried on.

I only remember small snippets of having all sorts of measurement devices and electrodes attached to my head. It was pretty scary for such a small child! In addition to all the testing, my parents started receiving sign language lessons, paid for by our municipality of residence: they had to learn a new foreign language to communicate with me. A rehabilitation therapist visited us now and again to provide my parents with some support and also to play with me using sign language. They would bring picture books from which we’d learn signs. My parents adopted the habit of simultaneously signing and speaking to me.

Little by little I started to learn signs that allowed me to make connections with my parents and relatives. Two of my aunts also took part in the at-home sign language teaching. It must have felt wonderful for my family to finally make some kind of contact with me. Presumably every parent would feel the same as their child takes the first steps in interaction. I was lucky, after all, to become acquainted with Finnish Sign Language at an early enough age, and it became my first language. There are no other deaf members in my extended family, so as a sign language user I naturally became the centre of attention. As a youngster, it never occurred to me that I was the only deaf person in the family. It all felt so natural; I was like any other child – one who wanted to play, laugh, cry and steal his parents’ attention.

My family and I have only ever attended one adjustment training camp for hearing parents with deaf children. It lasted one week and my parents felt they benefited from it greatly, because they could practise signing, saw grown-up deaf role models and got to know a peer group of parents of deaf children. That was the only adjustment training course that was ever offered to us. These days, similar courses are run more frequently and by a number of different organizations in Finland, including the Service Foundation for the Deaf, the Finnish Association of the Deaf, and KLVL (the Finnish Association of Parents of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children).

I have often pondered what it must feel like for hearing parents when they find out their child is deaf. For me it is completely natural, because I see deafness as just one characteristic among many – like blondness, birthmarks, twins, various disabilities, and so on. But what does it actually feel like? What if parents have never encountered any kind of diversity, and end up with a deaf child? It must be a big thing. It is completely understandable that, initially, it will cause bewilderment. Their child isn’t “healthy”. They will be terrified whether they will ever be able to speak with their child; naturally, all parents want to pass on both their language and their culture.

In Finland, as elsewhere, 90–95% of parents of deaf children are hearing. In other words, only 5–10% of deaf children have parents whose mother tongue is sign language. Hearing parents of deaf children not only usually know nothing about being deaf but are faced with learning an entirely foreign language and culture. This is quite a tall order. Often this is compounded by receiving only scanty information on sign language or deaf culture. In my experience, Finnish university hospitals’ hearing centres proclaim a very unilateral and uniform message on the importance of learning spoken Finnish.

Gradually my Finnish language skills developed in parallel with signing. In other words, I was brought up bilingual in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL) and spoken Finnish. Signing came easier to me, because my other senses, including sight, had intensified to compensate. I started learning Finnish with a speech therapist and it became my second language. I assiduously visited the therapist, who was a very dear and attentive lady, and she continued teaching at my primary school. I entered the infants’ group at a public day care centre at the age of about three. Suddenly I was surrounded entirely by people speaking only Finnish. Again, I was the only sign language person.1 Some of the carers knew a few basic signs through which they could communicate with me. My speaking skills improved. I also learned to understand some of what was spoken around me. I used a hearing aid, which allowed me to hear a little.

Initially the hearing aid was a large device that hung around my neck in a cloth bag. It included hard earpieces inserted into the ear canals. I didn’t like the aid at all, because I always had to be wary of, particularly when running and playing. Fortunately, I was rid of it once I grew big enough to wear behind-the-ear devices. I needed constant eye contact with those who were speaking, to make out what they were saying at all. Lip-reading is pretty challenging! Soon spoken language began to take over from my original first language, FinSL. I could not carry out full conversations with other children, but that was no problem when playing.

A fun detail I remember is my devotion to toy cars as a toddler. I must have inherited that from my dad, who was car-mad even as an adult. My parents gave me a nice collection of cars. I ended up carting them to and from day care, even though it wasn’t really allowed. By some means I managed to obtain special dispensation to bring a bagful of brand-new cars for the other children to marvel at. I’m sure my mother especially remembers the time when she was taking me to day care on her bicycle and it started to rain. What happened? Rain got into the plastic bag and soaked my cars. I cried and wailed like a lunatic.

Another thing I recall from day care is worrying whether I was good enough. I would repeatedly ask the carers if I was a good boy. “Me ood?” while signing “good”. It weighed on me a lot, even if I hadn’t done anything naughty, played any tricks, teased anyone or disobeyed the rules. I would just reiterate my question, to the carers’ bewilderment. Again and again they kindly had to answer that of course I was a good boy. I just wouldn’t quite believe it.

I continuously monitored the carers’ countenances, sporadic hand gestures, eyes and mouth. I would associate certain movements – from the trace of a smile to expressions of worry – with feelings caused by myself. If I could not hear the carers or manage to establish proper communication with them, I would become unsettled. I would read others’ expressions and conclude something was amiss. This escalated to the point that I had to be constantly alert.

Even as a child, I reacted strongly to faces, and this has stayed with me to this day. I am prone to feeling guilty for any sadness I detect around me and have an urge quickly to address the issue. I want to cheer people up, make them smile. Many have warned me that I am too kind-hearted, incapable of anger, and I do admit that kindness has often landed me in trouble. Once, when I was a child, I offered a neighbour’s older boy a sweet and he demanded the whole bag. I was quick to cede it to him, because I was scared to say no. My mother eventually went and retrieved my bag.

This photograph shows my large hearing device and my toy car collection

Outside of day care, I used to play with neighbouring kids who were not hearing-impaired. One of them was a slightly younger boy, with whom we liked to get into small japes. One day, on the spur of the moment, we decided to climb a huge mountain of soil that had been tipped into someone’s garden. In front of it was a row of parked cars. We reckoned we should give them a little soil wash, so we threw and threw soil, marvelling at how black the cars – and us boys – were turning. After a while we realized it might not have been the best idea. Our parents rushed over, horrified, and had quite a lot of explaining to do to the car owners.

My cousins and I used to take turns spending summers at each other’s houses. We came up with plenty of pastimes, from garden games to swimming and other adventures. I was able to communicate with them and with our neighbours by speaking. It wasn’t too hard with friends. I could make out what they were saying – of course, they made sure to speak to me carefully and calmly, maintaining eye contact.

My parents and I were always keen exercisers. We had a brilliant outdoor recreation area close to our house, where we would spend lots of time in winter. Once, my dad and I were racing down a snowy hill on a brand-new sledge. Of course, the sledge couldn’t take our combined weight on jump after jump of the steep slope. The back of the sledge went crack and caused just as much drama as the wet toy cars had, back in the day.

I also have a fun memory related to my own name, which my parents tried to teach me to pronounce. For some reason I kept hearing it as “Komana”. Nothing like Juhana, eh? So I used to call myself Komana, giving my parents plenty to explain to people we didn’t know. Besides my parents, cousins and playmates, the people most important to me in my childhood included my aunt “Päiti” and my uncle “Ahu”. These pronunciations were once again my own. Päiti knew some sign language and always made sure to take notice of me in every situation. We’d visit my auntie and uncle often. They had a German Shepherd named Ira, and we became fast friends. Ira especially liked to join me in the hot sauna.

My father was a keen jokester, who always had to play all sorts of tricks. One time he noticed Ira in a parked car outside a supermarket, where my aunt and uncle where shopping. By chance, the car door was unlocked, so my dad took the dog out and walked her over to her owners, cool as a cucumber. It sure left them scratching their heads to see their dog coming to meet them at the shop.

My mother kept a hawk’s eye on me at all times. I enjoyed the best possible care and a safe growth environment. I’m sure being an only child and, on top of that, deaf played its part. My mother was always conscientious in checking I had done my homework, for example. She also taught me to understand the significance of books. As I grew, we would chat about anything and everything.

Once again, I’m party to one of my dad’s tricks

I was close to my maternal grandparents, who were also my godparents. At primary school age, I spent countless languid days at their house in the countryside, a red wooden cabin surrounded by berry bushes and fields. There were rushing rapids near by. The riverside had a rug-washing place that smelled of pine soap and there was a proper, old-fashioned wood-heated sauna. I used to call my grandmother Grandma Pancake, because her pancakes were legendary. She was ready to step in whenever we needed help around the house. When my mother went into hospital, Grandma Pancake immediately came to look after me. One day I convinced her to hike many miles through forests to go and see my mother in hospital. We were instructed to get a taxi back.

I spent my early childhood like any small kid. There were some communication problems, but they didn’t bother me. I was allowed to roam free and play like the others. My sign language skills, however, hardly improved at all after the initial steps. There was no linguistic environment or role model around that could have reinforced it as my first language. Imagine living as a minority language speaker in a foreign environment, where no one shares your mother tongue or is able to speak it properly. Would you find the resources for improving your language skills? It would be very difficult, if not impossible. Meanwhile, my Finnish was getting close to native level. As I approached preschool age, my parents pondered what would be the most suitable linguistic environment for me. Would I go on to an ordinary Finnish school, as I had been in day care, or did other alternatives exist? They had lots of questions to consider and weigh up. What would be best for my future?

1 A sign language person or signer is used in this book for a person whose mother tongue is sign language, whether they are deaf, hard of hearing or hearing. The Finnish term is viittomakielinen, and there is no complete equivalent for it in English.

2. School and Leisure

My parents decided on a deaf school, Hakala Special School, which was located in my hometown of Hyvinkää. The pupils comprised local deaf and hard of hearing children, as well as hearing children with other linguistic disorders (e.g. dysphasia). The same set of buildings included a special school for the mentally disabled and a Finnish-language primary school. The deaf school included the preschool, primary and lower secondary levels. I started the first year of preschool just before turning six, in 1987. Initially there were around thirty deaf and hard of hearing pupils in our school.

My parents had tried to explain to me in advance what school was all about and what I would be doing there. But entering my brand-new school for the first time was like stepping onto a spaceship. I had butterflies in my stomach and felt dizzy. From afar I spotted a young girl with her parents, and my eye was immediately drawn to her neon-coloured hearing aid. This fashion-conscious girl was embarking on her school education with a great deal more self-confidence than I. Being suddenly surrounded by many signers was also new for me.

I had no recollections of the one-week adjustment training camp we had attended; I was still so very young. I just marvelled at how many deaf and hard of hearing children there could be. I could hardly believe my eyes. I was scared and uneasy about landing on this foreign planet. The school had many older students who would later make wonderful role models as deaf teenagers.