“Another instance in which my Fulbright project feels like a party I invited myself to…”One of the most common responses I get from Muscovites when I say I’m studying deaf culture is “Have you been to a deaf disco?” For the longest time my own response to this was a sort of pathetic shrug. For all their fame, I couldn’t seem to get acquainted with any deaf people who go (or still go) to them.
Purely by chance I overheard a friend of a friend of a friend make mention of attending last week’s disco celebrating International Women’s Day. Despite never having seen her before, my enthusiasm at finally getting myself to the disco prompted me to simultaneously introduce and invite myself. The outgoing Vika was happy to swap phone numbers. I was impressed (and a bit jealous) at the speed and ease with which she signed. She is hearing and as been studying already a year and a half, obviously with the benefit of practice. I began to hope the disco might just be the keeper of that precious and ever-elusive—RSL practice.
The metro ride to the club was very fun. Vika came with her non-signing sister and Gena, a deaf guy. The three signers chatted about American and Russian sign. I was surprised to learn from Gena that he had studied English and ASL at his school in Moscow. (How didn’t I know about this?!) Almost any conversation in sign involves using most all of the signs I know and learning a few along the way- this process is utterly intoxicating.
As we made our way into the club, I was surprised to see an acquaintance immediately- a friend of a friend from the Deaf Rehab Center. He introduced me to some deaf friends and we chatted briefly before I was hustled off with my few acquaintances to the dance. On the dance floor we met up with another familiar face, Kolya, a hard-of-hearing student of technology who had previously been a sort of sour presence in our sign class before disappearing midcourse. I asked him why he had dropped out of RSL class. It was very difficult to communicate this to him, as it was loud and he seemed set against understanding sign. After a seeming very long explanation involving sign, pantomime and shouting he responded with palpable disdain “I don’t have time. I speak.” The last phrase pronounced as it to say- you just insulted me by saying that I need to learn sign. I responded saying that sign could really come in handy for example when you are trying to talk in a dance club. I am not sure he understood me.
The club consisted of a large dance floor- still sparsely inhabited- with a two-floor bar united by the drunk’s favorite hazard- a congested staircase- all presided over by a techno-loving DJ duo. I made the rounds with my new posse and scanned the crowds for familiar faces. Not seeing any, I was struck by a series of now familiar sensations that I hereby term “mash-disorientation”. It’s the slightly nauseating sensation you get when you, knowing some signs, look at a large crowd of people signing various conversations and try to “take it all in”. The sensation is that your eyeballs are not wide enough and that your overloaded brain- swimming in sea of half completed associations- is temporarily paralyzed and cannot direct your eyes to either focus on one conversation or look away from the scene- as disconcerting as it is. The word “mash” refers to the Russian verb signers use affectionately and sign-haters use disdainfully to describe the movement of hands during sign (
mahat rukami).
After a few minutes of this, I took my exhausted eyeballs to the dance floor as tried to pretend that I was of those five people on earth who can successfully dance to techno. Pretty soon I was dancing was a tall deaf guy who I think believed he was one of those people- he literally danced circles around me. If at this point you are wondering, how you deaf people dance to music they can’t hear, I remind you that dance club music can be not just heard but felt. The volume of the music was no higher than in any other dance club I’ve been in. At one point the techno-dance-machine man signed something to me. After asking him to repeat it, slowly, around the third time I picked out the sign eight and put together that he was wishing me a Happy 8th of March, International Women’s Day. I thanked him and explained that I was just learning sign and didn’t know it well- a bit unnecessary, but it was the first thing my addled brain came up with. I continued dancing in various conformations of my new and old acquaintances and together received the first Happy Women’s Day announcement by the DJs at 12:01 (this holiday I still do not totally understand, but it was a memorable way to begin the celebration.)
I didn’t find it hard to keep to my original plan of taking the metro home, despite leaving my new acquaintances for the night. (Metro line transfer tunnels close at around 1am, and the whole show shuts down from 2-6). While the disco did combine dancing and sign- two of my favorite activities- the physical unpleasantness of loud music, smoke and middle-of-the-night exhaustion that I am prone to- made it difficult to enjoy either. I left sincerely happy that I came and even more happy that I was leaving. And now, should anyone ever ask me, “have you been to one of those deaf discos?!” I can answer affirmatively.
“Meeting the Happies.”
Introducing yourself to a group of deaf strangers in the metro is one way to make friends. This is how I met Misha, whose last name Veselov, has roots in the Russian word happy. Last Friday I had a fabulous day with Misha, his wife Jhanna and their five-year-old wonder-child, Ignat at their dacha. We talked for hours over tasty food and walked in the springy woods. At their home there is almost no sign, despite both Misha and Jhanna being profoundly HH. They speak, read lips and use hearing aids. Jhanna prides herself on not knowing sign very well. For both of them, sign is a thing for the deaf to use among themselves as an aid in communication.
They both described what they perceive as negative changes in education for the deaf. They both studied at the strongest school for HH in Moscow- School 30- back in the day when demands on deaf students were high, earning an A was nearly impossible and all students could communicate freely with hearing people. After this education, they were prepared to get into a good University, find work and navigate the world of hearing people independently and successfully. Today, however, deaf students are coddled and seldom pushed to achieve high standards. Sign language has become widespread. Today’s students enter the world much less able to communicate with hearing people and expecting that everything in life will be given to them. Where as in their day, graduates of School 30 with B average could enter a competitive University, today even A students cannot get in. Of course I don’t agree with their valuation of sign, however, the trends they are seeing are real and disheartening. The root of the problem is not sign, in my opinion, but rather the age-old prejudice that deaf people are stupid because they cannot hear. I’m afraid to say getting rid of that prejudice might be the only thing more difficult than getting Russian bureaucracy to officially recognize sign and put it into the education program.
I would be amiss in not noting that the star of the day was Ignat, who is hearing and a little brainiac. He is one of the most outgoing, well-spoken and hilarious children I’ve ever met. We had fun singing Jingle Bells together, as he is learning English in his kindergarten. Misha and Jhanna are trying to get him into a special school where he will study four languages.
Misha writes for the Moscow deaf newspaper, Deaf World, and previously interviewed me. The following article is my translation of his very idiomatic text. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to read the text before publication resulting in quite a few inaccuracies, but in retrospect the article probably set more things right than not. At the interview he told me that several deaf people had told him I was trying to get deaf people to join a cult (not the first time I’ve been suspected as a cult recruiter, if you remember.) He also said that the three other deaf people that were in the group in the metro didn’t actually believe that I was an American. They decided I was from Irkutsk. J
The following was published in the March 2007 Deaf World:
Elizabeth’s Choice
Sometimes things like this happen. There is a group of young, happy deaf people riding on the metro, hands flying. The air is full of the whistling sounds deaf people make while signing. And someone comes up to them.
The girl approaches, speaking in sign. Well, that much is understandable, she has seen her own. Deaf people are always drawn to each other—in the metro, the woods, a mine—it doesn’t matter. But this girl’s signing seems a little bit odd.
It all becomes clear—she is hearing! Our deaf friends knowingly nod to each other. Probably this girl has deaf parents or perhaps is studying to become a teacher of the deaf. That would explain why she somehow knows sign.
But why, is her articulation also a bit off?
The next revelation is that she is an American. That’s right, from the USA.
Our deaf friends are taken thrown into a state of utter shock. In the Moscow metro—an American? Who knows Russian sign? Who out of the blue approaches deaf people just to chat? All this is happening at a time when our own Russian “speaking” passengers shun the deaf like the plague… To see this, there…
Really, the world is full of wonders.
The American is named Elizabeth, last name Zane. It’s not difficult to remember.
Elizabeth went to a regular American high school. Here she began reading Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevksy in translation. She liked them and continued to read through the Russian classics while she started studying the Russian language. The goal was to read Russian literature in the original. In short, Elizabeth had found her calling in life.
But this calling, as turned out, had more to it.
Elizabeth’s family moved frequently, forever moving from one place to another—looking for greener pastures. For a time they were in a certain city where Elizabeth befriended a hard-of-hearing couple with two deaf children. As they communicated together, Elizabeth mastered the basics of conversational American Sign Language.
Elizabeth’s parents were on the move again, landing her in a new city. She never saw her non-hearing friends again. A few years passed and she began to forget ASL.
At Middlebury College there were also no deaf people. As a student there, Zane studied the complexities of the Russian language, the nuances of Russian literature and the peculiarities of the Russian soul. But of course, no one but a Russian can understand Russia.
Elizabeth studied abroad in Siberia—Irkutsk, to be exact. She came to learn Russian in Russia, in the depth of the Siberian motherland.
And here in Irkutsk, this American found deaf people. She befriended the Irkutsk deaf community, began learning some Russian sign and found herself a place teaching English at a deaf school. In this way she ended up studying two unique languages and cultures- Russian language and culture and Russian sign and Russian-deaf culture.
Upon returning home, her interests continued to develop. She found herself divided between Russian deaf culture and Russian literature. With time, this division was resolved. Elizabeth received a Fulbright scholarship. Fulbright is a state-run exchange program that allows students and professors to live in different countries, study their culture and gain experience.
Elizabeth received one of these grants, planning to study the subculture of the deaf in Russian. She arrived in Moscow in August of last year. She currently rents a room with some friends and studies us. She is here for one year, until the Fulbright buck runs out.
Does Elizabeth see any differences between deaf Russians and Americans? She says that American deaf are more self-confident, more uninhibited and full-of-life.
Well, of course, we say. The deaf in America get everything handed to them on a platter. Sign language has official status, they have five translators for each ear. They are able to work anywhere, even get paid. How could you not be happy under such conditions?
In Russia, Elizabeth sees some differences. The deaf do receive help, but it’s minimal. Higher education for the deaf is in short supply and there is a shortage of interpreters. Sign language has yet to receive official status.
(DISCLAIMER: The following two paragraphs Misha made up. When I asked him about them he said, of course you didn’t say anything about this, but I just added it myself. I guess it’s the desire to put a Russian-spin on the article. I am in no position to make such a statement, nor do I think it accurate. Misha himself told me that of the 12,000 deaf in Moscow, only 1,000 are literate. And among my few deaf American friends, there are those who have most certainly read literature. And lastly, Stephen King is not literature.) Elizabeth is also surprised by something else. With the happy American deaf she does not discuss literature. They don’t even know it exists. Signs are enough, who needs literature?American deaf don’t read Dostoevsky, they don’t even know their own writers, like Steinbeck, Bradbury or Stephen King. In Russia, practically every deaf person at least knows the name Dostoevsky and has maybe read him. Many deaf Russians have even read Stephen King and some even remember Steinbeck. Russia cannot be understood with the mind… (Reference to Tutchev poem. EZ.) But Elizabeth is trying. At RSUH she is studying Russian culture. At MPGU she is studying the basics of Russian sign language. She goes to shows at the Theater of Mime and Gesture. She is getting to know deaf people.
She’s working at School 65 teaching deaf students English. She wants to set up an exchange project between deaf students in Russia and America over the internet. Later on they can visit each other in the flesh. Will School 65 be drawn into these huge American plans?
The Fulbright scholarship is not luxurious. Elizabeth in all this time will return home just once. She can spend Christmas with her parents and then back to Moscow. She is an enthusiast.
She’s a real komsomolka (reference to communist status for model Soviet young women), and also an athlete. She runs every morning in the parks and is not afraid.
Elizabeth does not know what she will do in the future. Will she become an expert in Russian literature or deaf subculture? We’ll have to wait and see.
Elizabeth has no boyfriend- not in America or in Russia. Let the girl at least figure of her profession!
End of article.
The inaccuracies in the article are an interesting feedback on how much of what I communicated to him was understood. This experience suggests to me that communication must be done in a context. My communication style is far too direct for Russian culture in general and what is more, I think people honestly have a hard time believing some of the things I say- for example, when I explain that I, an American with a vague interest in deaf culture, came to Moscow for a year to study deaf culture on a government funded grant. It’s so outrageous to most, I think, that it makes more sense to fabricate something more believable, despite my repeated statements. The principle seems to be- when in doubt, make up something more believable.
