Amber Rose Smock
"Searching for Cultural Identity in the Worlds of Sounds and Signs: A
Story of One Deaf Artist"
Sponsor: Mr. Kevin Radley, Art Practice
Project Description
Amber will create a multimedia narrative—layering videos, performance, sound, and slides—and a written journal based on her experiences of culture shock as she explores her deaf identity as a young adult. Growing up, Amber was mainstreamed and considered herself hard-of-hearing, but had never met anyone from the Deaf community. This summer, Amber consciously immersed herself in Deaf culture and American Sign Language (ASL) for the first time. She visited the Professional Theater School of the National Theater of the Deaf (NTD) in Chester, Connecticut, observing deaf people engaged in the process of propagating Deaf culture through performance. Through their example, she learned about the meaning of being a deaf person, and also learned some basic ASL, which is the keystone of Deaf culture. While at NTD, Amber became reconciled with her identity as a deaf person. She continued her ASL studies with a class at Gallaudet University in Washington DC, the only deaf university in the world. She will continue to study ASL through her senior year, and in the spring will exhibit her narrative about "walking the fence" between the worlds of the deaf and the hearing.
Scholar's Photo
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| Amber posed beside a display case featuring her research/creative project that was mounted in Dwinelle Hall in conjunction with Undergraduate Research month. |
Scholar's Journal
Sometimes, the line between my research on deafness and my personal experience completely disappears. At times like this I write poetry to try to explain my thoughts.
Because I came into my homeland late,
I felt that I was only a stranger without status,
Someone from the murky borderlands
Between the deaf and the hearing worlds,
Who did not really understand the rules and customs.
I saw my homeland as a place where other people already were,
Where other people had to initiate me,
Where other people judged my fitness as a person,
A place I had to make a journey to.
My problem was: how can I really come home
When acceptance may not be a given,
When rejection might be my fate?
My homeland is not a place
Where anyone can build a house.
My homeland lies in how deaf people accept each other.
My homeland lies in living eyes, in living faces,
In living hands that reach and soothe and touch.
My homeland lies in the hearts of deaf people.
But now I think that I have forgotten
The importance of the borderlands.
There must be a reason why some people were made
To straddle two worlds
Instead of only one.
Yet why do people like me suffer so much?
As young people, we have no choice
But to live the way our elders tell us to.
We think we are alone in a place that belongs to others.
But then I figured out that my homeland is not homogenous.
It is full of people who are asking questions,
It is full of people who are doubtful and afraid,
Some more than me, others less,
But all of them seeking answers
From one another.
I found other people like me,
Asking questions like my own,
Seeking answers to calm their doubts.
Other times, I can visualize a scene in my performance, like a movie. But it’s hard to put scenes like these together, to create a context so that they can happen. For these, I draw pictures. I make landscapes of my identity. I try to make my visions real. I draw a forming fetus in its womb, caught in a battle between signs and sound. I draw fading faces lost in a mist of sound waves. I draw a quivering cloud of eyes, bound together by red muscles and surrounded by handshapes. I draw a single eye in an audiologist’s testing room, looking out upon the signs and symbols of audiometry. I draw myself with wandering eyes and hands, confined in the small space between the Deaf and Hearing worlds.
Drawing is like dreaming. So is writing. It helps my subconscious emerge. The more I put myself on other surfaces, the more I know myself. The better I know myself, the closer I come to making my own identity work as a context for my individual experiences.
Amber Smock
San Diego, CA
August 1999
