I first met Louise Stern when I was a freshman at the student newspaper. She was the features editor, responsible for being in tune with the scenesters in and outside of Gallaudet. I was a seventeen-year-old dork suffering from serious culture shock. I wore baggy all-purpose T-shirts and jeans because I didn't know any better; she wore peasant tops and distressed booties, her hair artfully arranged in a dark, mysterious flip with all the casual nonchalance I assigned to an upperclassman. The only art history major in her consort, she was too sophisticated and worldly and too far out of my league for me to ever have a conversation with her, though we attended the same meetings and knew the same people.
Fast-forward just over a decade. Now a London resident, Louise Stern has published a collection of short stories, Chattering, and founded her own contemporary art magazine for children, Maurice. She's also currently at work on both a novel and a play. I'm stuck over here in the DC area, still recovering from the aftermath of my divorce and battling with the final requirements of my MFA degree and constantly forgetting to call myself a "writer."
Color me jealous.
Or so I thought until I caught a "reading performance" Louise gave at Gallaudet December 1 with her creative collaborator (and ASL interpreter) Oliver Pouliot.
Together, the duo performed a story from her collection that I would later find out was called "The Wild Man." By "performed," I mean it was more theatrical than the other author readings I've attended (and I've attended my share -- Meg Wolitzer and T.C. Boyle, just to name-drop a couple). It was dark except for the front of the room, where track lighting lit up a platform. A photograph of a beached canoe on a tropical island served as the backdrop. Louise and Oliver entered stage right and took up their positions and began the story in ASL. The room went quiet as the story unfolded.
Louise narrated in ASL, with Oliver breaking in at moments with gestures I would call having roots in ASL but universal in their implied meaning. During the Q and A session that followed, I would find out that Oliver performed internal narration moments, and Louise performed the rest of her story. When they were done performing, they walked offstage, leaving us contemplating the empty space they'd left behind.
Hands waved in the air. It was nice.
So here's the thing that shamed me into silence until now: I understood absolutely none of the reading.
Nothing. I got some images, sure. I remember something about a black and white spotted rabbit, and something about three green huts, and I know there was a guy named Victor in the story, but I can't tell you what any of those has to do with anything. As the performance continued, I figured maybe it was one of those instances of "theatrical ASL," where the actors' lines get so stylized that people like me -- someone who isn't a native, yes, but proficient enough in the language that my students sigh in relief when they realize I'm one of them -- are hopelessly lost.
But then the Q and A session began and people started asking Louise questions about the story.
"When Victor saw the boat..." started one. I didn't get the rest of the question because I was utterly freaking out, scrambling to remember: boat? What boat? Ah, they must've read the book before today.
"Sorry, I haven't read the book yet, but... So he threw down the picture of the girlfriend, right? So I was wondering..." Shit... umm, what? There was a picture of a girlfriend?!
Then the discussion took an interesting turn -- people seemed to want to ask questions about Louise's choices -- to include deaf English, to choose a story that wasn't about a deaf character at all for her performance at Gallaudet -- and about how she exemplified what a deaf writer could be.
And this isn't a verbatim quote, but I inferred some frustration on Louise's part as she responded that she didn't necessarily want to write deaf stories for the sake of being deaf, and that if people wanted to question why she wrote things the way she did, they could, but she didn't have to justify herself.
It's a bit of bravado I admire -- so many times I've whined to told people who read my work-in-progress and tell me I need to include more deaf stuff, "but I don't want to! I'm not just deaf! It's boring to me. I just want to write my story!"
But Louise did say something about writing her stories that I found interesting. In English, on paper, the words all have the same sort of level of physical presence. As she turned to her collaboration with Oliver as a way to bring those words alive in the three-dimensional world of ASL, she found it exciting. More than once, she used the phrase "push boundaries" -- that darling of artists everywhere.
That's also something she said that stopped my jealousy cold: she's grown up in a deaf family using ASL, so to see her written work coming back to signs? Exciting!
I grew up with a hearing family using spoken and written and cued English. When it's my turn to breathe life into my words in front of an audience, so far it still looks like my best option is to co-opt a language I learned later in life and rely on a second person to convey my original words to the audience. Not exciting. The opposite of exciting; it feels like a betrayal to my own work.
Since the reading performance, I've bought my own copy of Chattering (which was the first time I knew what the story she performed was called). And experienced sheer relief as the images I saw Louise sign resolved themselves into a narrative I was more comfortable with, securely right there on the page in English. (And I'm happy to report she does do some novel things with the form, so ahead and add Chattering to your to-read list!)
I've blogged before about my frustration with the idea of author readings and what I'll do when it's my turn to present my own work. Seeing Louise, a published writer and accomplished artist, in person and still experiencing her own frustrations even as she finds her outlet, stirred up my own ambivalence. I wish Louise well, though I'll be jealous of her no more. She's carving her own niche out, and I've yet to make a dent in mine, but our works are and will continue to be different.
Ah, well. Oliver said something in the Q and A session that I think describes quite well how I feel about my own writing and the eventual presentation(s) I'll make: sometimes it's easier to describe something by what it isn't than what it is.
