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The Deaf House, by Joanne Weber (Saskatoon, SK: Thistledown Press, 2013, 326 pp., paperback, $18.95, ISBN: 978-1927068-48-9)
From the opening to the closing Unes of Joanne Webers literary memoir, The Deaf House, the reader is reminded of George Eliot's assertion in Middlemarch that "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence" (162). Weber's book, structured around the same symmetry with which she seeks a literal and metaphorical house for "my Deaf body" (324), is a reminder of the tragedy that Eliot described as underpinning human existence. Like the tinnitus that rings in Weber's ears throughout her life, this tragedy is a constant presence in the book.
The Deaf House tells several stories, including that of the Saskatchewan Deaf community following the 1991 closure of the R.J. Williams School for the Deaf, the only Canadian provincial school for Deaf students to be named for a Deaf person (Carbin 1996). These stories are seamlessly woven together in a nonlinear juxtaposition of episodes. In the opening pages, Weber describes her solitary bus journey as an eleven-year-old to the capital city of Regina, where she was presented to a church basement gathering of parents of other Deaf children. For these parents, Weber was an example of a so-called oral success. As one parent asked her, " 'Your spee perect. Are you reaee pro unn deee eaf?'" For Weber presents a Deaf life from the inside. The form of the back-and-forth dialogue that takes place later in the book is reminiscent of role shifting in sign languages:
PLEASED MOTHER: "Joanne, you will receive an award for being the Saskatchewan Junior Citizen of the Year."
SULLEN JOANNE: "Why on earth would they give me an...