Launch Day!

Happy birthday to my first book

Hey readers,

It’s today! For folks who have been following along via this newsletter, some of you for quite a while now, my memoir is out in the world today.

(Also, for those of you reading this newsletter in your email inboxes: amend above banner to AVAILABLE NOW! Because it is.)

In honor of launch day for Articulate, I had a fun time pulling together a video reel of different deaf people I know contributing their own ASL signs for my book’s title. It’s such a multi-layered and complicated word. And fascinatingly: no one sign I received was exactly the same as the others. (No, I didn’t prompt anyone to give me any particular sign or another.)

Video available below. It makes me so happy to watch this: my part aside, I love seeing everyone else’s ASL contributions, seeing this collective bilingualism and brilliance.

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A few friends of mine started picking up their copies of my book last week (a couple days early!). I got several texts very late last night when the audiobook launched. I’ve enjoyed seeing all these updates and photos from people I know. (Friend-selfies-with-your-book is a truly wonderful genre. Same comment applies to dog-photos-with-your-book!)

And now I’m excited that this will get out to even more readers, now that launch day is finally here.

I was telling a few friends last week that, in my own personal life, it can still feel rare for me to bring Deaf and hearing worlds together, to show both sides of myself so deeply, the side of me that still does sign as well as the side of me that still does speak. (Plus lots of other stuff in between.)

My social groups, my languages, my forms of cultural knowledge can still feel rather separate at times, even if I bring them with me everywhere, too. They can still feel rather complex.

My experiences of language aren’t the same as other people’s. Of course they aren’t. But my hope is still that we can discuss such experiences together, within all their distinctions and complications. I think there’s a lot to gain from learning more and more about the different social and communicative worlds we inhabit, all with thoughtfulness and care.

I certainly did try to address many of my own lived complexities in this book, and also without tying too tidy of a bow on things. Language can be difficult. And language is also beautiful and powerful. Many things can be true at once.

This is also what I love the most about this book’s title, the way “articulate” is such a multifaceted word. For me, its shifting nature hints at the inherent duality of my own d/Deaf experience, indeed of language itself: of how words and experiences can morph into different forms depending on where we are, who we’re with, what our goals are, even what kind of day we’re having that day. Such messiness feels like part of human life, alongside the ongoing quest for clarity, and I enjoy diving into various language-tangles with other people who will go there with me.

Whatever articulation means to you, and however you go forth and articulate yourself in this world, I hope you find something meaningful in these pages. Now available wherever books are sold!

Cheers, and do catch me on book tour the next few weeks if you’re in one of these places:

• Thursday 9/18: Albuquerque, NM (Bookworks, 6pm)

• Monday 9/22: Cambridge, MA (Harvard Bookstore, 7pm)

• Tuesday 9/23: Washington, DC (Politics & Prose - Union Market, w/ Kristen Harmon, 7pm)

• Thursday 10/2: Berkeley, CA (Mrs. Dalloway’s, w/ Anne Finger, 7pm)

• Friday 10/3: Santa Rosa, CA (Copperfield’s Books, w/ RM Horrell, 7pm)

• Thursday 11/13: virtual event (NYU’s Center for Disability Studies, w/ Rebecca Sanchez, 7pm)

All links updated this time! Also check out my website events page for ongoing details. I can’t wait for more people to read and contribute their own unique perspectives.