Albuquerque author has way with words in 'A Deaf Memoir of Voice'

Rachel Kolb of Albuquerque, author of the new book “Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice,” was born profoundly deaf in 1990.

According to her family’s lore, when she was 2 years old Kolb’s speech therapist gave her mother an update on a particular day’s therapy session, adding this advice: “I want to tell you something. Never put limitations on this child. She can do anything she wants to.”

Her mother recalls continuing to chat with the therapist. That led to talking about how down the road Rachel might attend the best school in the city and then go on to college.

The point the therapist made was to recognize that Rachel had the potential to achieve.

“The most important thing my parents could do was let me find the way,” she writes.

Still, Rachel’s parents, as most hearing parents of a deaf child, were drawn to the notion of wanting her to learn to speak.

“But they made another vital decision — that their relationship with me would never pivot upon whether I spoke or not,” she writes.

Her parents decided that Rachel’s home life should include whatever means of communication she could best use and understand. That meant that American Sign Language would be part of her world — and theirs, too.

Kolb writes that her mother had always told her that it was obvious her daughter couldn’t learn to hear. Her parents flipped that thinking around: They could, and should, learn to sign. And they did.

Her mother, Kolb writes, also gave credit to a book she checked out of the local public library the year of Kolb’s birth — Thomas Spradley’s memoir “Deaf Like Me.”

Kolb quoted her mother as saying that by the time she had finished Spradley’s book “I knew we couldn’t follow an oral-only approach.”

Kolb writes that since her earliest years, both of her parents were committed to signing. “They held each other accountable, and they reminded my younger (hearing) sister to sign, too,” the author writes.

“Articulate” is an eloquent, warm, forthright personal narrative that follows the author’s familial, social and academic experiences in elementary school, at Albuquerque Academy, as an undergraduate at Stanford University, as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, as a doctoral student at Emory University, and as a junior fellow at Harvard.

The narrative is blended with a series of informative sidebars that discuss relevant subjects about deafness. Those subjects include the pioneering French deaf teacher Laurent Clerc who came to America in 1816 and whose French signs grew into ASL; Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone, but spent much of his life tinkering with a phonetic writing system called Visible Speech that would include the deaf; and a 1960 monograph by William Stokoe titled “Sign Language Structure,” which led to ASL being recognized as a full language.

In the opening chapter of “Articulate,” Kolb directs the reader to an invitation she received to give a TED talk while she was a student at Stanford.

It seemed ordinary for many people to feel anxious about giving a presentation to a large audience.

But there was another element about her anxiety.

“Less ordinary,” Kolb writes, “was when a person born profoundly deaf attempted to speak and be understood by hearing people.”

Anxiety clouded her feelings about giving the talk. Would she give it using her spoken voice or would she be aided by an ASL interpreter? What would a 23-year-old be able to talk about?

She chose to use her speaking voice and she decided to address the subject of deafness. She gave the talk in 2013.

Kolb figured out why she had received the TED talk invitation: She had just won a prestigious Rhodes scholarship and was the first signing deaf person to receive the award.

Kolb writes about telling her scholarship interviewers that the interviews would all be done with ASL interpreters and that they’d be signing everyone’s remarks.

The interviewers asked about her thoughts on such topics as authors Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, on technology, on ethics and on disability.

Because she was a first-generation American with Disabilities Act kid she knew how to request interpreters. She said she appreciates the ADA’s legally protected rights for the accommodation.

After receiving the Rhodes scholarship she noticed that the public discussion in the media was rarely about access and equity.

Rather it was more about her deafness being the primary obstacle she had to overcome, she noted. That got her thinking the discussion could be redirected to how society could better adapt to those with disabilities.

In a Journal interview, Kolb said she hopes her book will get people to think more deeply about the impact of the ADA, that the ADA is the floor not the ceiling and “that (the law) recognizes the importance of inclusion and the rights of people with disabilities.”

Asked what message she would want the book to give readers about language accessibility, Kolb said, “I would encourage people to think about all the different ways that we really do have to communicate. … In that regard, it is important to find out what people’s accessibility needs are and to make sure everyone is accommodated.”

“Articulate” demonstrates Kolb’s power to communicate through another path — the written word.

She’s still a young woman and she’s already led an inspirational life.