(Suzanne Stecker)
Our next presenter is Emily McCully
and she's actually going to
tell us her experience
of going through the process
of writing her book, "My Heart Glow."
She received the F. Scott Medal.
Emily?
(Male Interpreter)
Correction of the interpretation: She was awarded the Caldecott Award for her work.
(Emily McCully, voice raspy)
Thank you so much.
I'm going to try to be heard
so that I can be interpreted.
I obviously need to be interpreted today.
I'm very, very happy to be here
and I've learned an enormous amount
in the first half of the program.
I wish I had known all of the things that I heard this afternoon
when I wrote this book.
I am a representative of the hearing community.
I tried to be a bridge
between the deaf community and the hearing community
in creating this story.
I was just telling that unfortunately
some of the reviewers of the book in the hearing community
were a little confused by it.
And so, I think a lot more work has to be done
to make ASL and Deaf Culture
understood in the hearing community.
Now, the reason that I told the story
of Alice Cogswell and Thomas Gallaudet
is that my son told me I should do it,
and I listened to him.
He is a linguist. He is fluent in Japanese--works in Japanese.
He speaks Russian, French, a little bit of other languages, a little Chinese.
And he got interested in American Sign Language
and took a course.
He practices it a lot.
I have to say, he goes to bars to practice it
with fluent ASL people
and has met very, very wonderful people that way.
He's been fascinated by Deaf History,
and he knew that in making children's books,
I always try to find a gripping story out of history
and they often have involved girls and women
whose stories are little known or else I invent them sometimes.
But I want to tell the stories of underdogs, basically,
because I think they have the most drama.
And when he told me that American Sign Language
and the very first school for the deaf in this country
were created because a young man met a young deaf girl,
I thought well, this is it, there's got to be a great story here.
And I think it is a great story.
Alice Cogswell was about two--
she lived in Connecticut,
she was the youngest child of a wealthy family.
Her father was a doctor
and quite a famous man in Connecticut.
When she was two, which would have been, lets see,
about 1805 I think--
or no, she was born in 1805--
1807, she came down with probably scarlet fever, but we're not sure,
and became profoundly deaf.
She recalled that when she woke up one morning,
she could no longer hear the church bells.
She couldn't hear the sound of--
she could see a carriage draw up to the door
outside her family's house
and couldn't hear any of the sounds that it was making.
They subjected her to radical treatment.
They poured horrible substances into her ears
through ear trumpets.
It was very painful. Nothing could be done.
Her family feared that she was doomed,
that she wouldn't go to heaven when she died
because they couldn't teach her about the Bible.
And in those days, that's what they thought--
that her soul was lost.
So, they loved her and they cherished her,
but they didn't know what to do.
And there were no schools for the deaf.
Deaf people had absolutely no way to communicate
with the rest of the world.
I am sure that they spoke with what was called "home sign" then.
And we heard this morning about the people
of Martha's Vineyard, most of whom came
in the 17th Century from one part of England,
where almost everybody was deaf.
So this was a case of genetic deafness.
And those people settled in Martha's Vineyard.
They had their own sign language,
and the rest of Martha's Vineyard learned it.
Everybody on the island, from the late 17th Century
through the early 20th Century,
spoke a sign language that was developed there.
And of course deaf people were considered perfectly normal
unlike what was the case
in the rest of the country.
Alice Cogswell and her sisters and brothers
used a kind of home sign, but she wasn't taught to read
she wasn't taught anything else.
And when Thomas Gallaudet,
who was in his early 20's when he met Alice--
he had cast about for what to do with his life
and finally he decided to go to theological seminary.
And he wanted to minister to Indian tribes,
which meant that he would learn
a kind of sign language because Indians did.
He graduated and came home to visit his parents in Hartford.
They lived next door to the Cogswells
and he saw Alice one day. And he felt terribly sorry for her
because she was sitting by herself
while her brothers and sisters played,
and she couldn't join in the games.
And he thought he would see,
since she looked so intelligent and appealing
and of course she was aware of him
because her other senses were very highly developed.
And he came over to her, and the story is
that he scratched the letters H-A-T on the dirt
and then put his hat on top of them and her face lit up.
She was already understanding
what reading would lead her to.
And he began working with her
trying to teach her to read.
And she was very, very receptive
and delighted.
And at this point, Dr. Cogswell thought that
he must reach not only Alice, but other deaf children
and found a school for them.
So he asked Thomas if he would go to Europe
and learn how to teach the deaf.
And Thomas agreed to do this.
The Cogswells raised enough money to send him
to England, where he knew that there was a school
in London and another one in Scotland,
operated by a family called Braidwood.
Gallaudet left Alice behind
but first he said Alice really should go to school
with her siblings.
So this was arranged.
The teacher at this school
was named Lydia Huntley.
She was later married to Mr. Sigourney.
So she became Lydia Huntley Sigourney,
a rather famous poetess of the day,
but at this time she was a young teacher.
Alice joined this little school
and everybody in the school learned to fingerspell --
that is, they had signs for each of the letters of the alphabet
and they would painstakingly spell out words.
So Alice learned a little bit more.
She learned to read
and she learned a little bit of history
and a little bit of geography and so on,
but she was not learning a language.
Meanwhile in London, Thomas was having a hard time.
The Braidwood family insisted on
teaching deaf people to talk.
There was no sign language used -- in fact, it was forbidden.
The Braidwoods told Thomas that they would teach him
their method, but he would have to stay in England
for two years and it would cost a lot more money
than they had raised for Thomas's trip.
So, something wonderful happened --
completely unexpected:
Thomas met an Abbot from Paris
and his young assistant who was deaf.
And the Abbot's name was Abbé Sicard
and his assistant was Laurent Clerc.
And Laurent Clerc, of couse, was deaf
and a fine teacher at a school in Paris
where they used sign language to teach the deaf children.
And Gallaudet went to Paris
and was taught how to use this method,
but he was getting terribly homesick
and he was running out of money.
So, he knew he had to go back to Hartford,
but in order to teach and to start a school
and teach deaf children in America,
he was going to need help.
So he persuaded Laurent Clerc
to come with him,
and this was extrordinary.
Clerc had to leave his parents behind.
He had to get permission to go.
Fortunately, he was a very adventurous young man
and had always wanted to see more of the world.
So they sailed to America.
It took almost two months
and during that time,
Gallaudet taught Clerc English
and Clerc taught Gallaudet
more of the signs that they were using in the school.
Now, that school in Paris
had adapted a kind of home sign
that French children naturally--
French deaf children--used with each other.
The teachers at the school saw that sign language
was being used by these children
and they knew that it was a good method,
but they thought that it needed help.
They thought they needed to make it grammatical.
They didn't realize that this natural sign language
already had a grammar.
So the kinds of misunderstandings
that people have always had about ASL
were there with its very founders.
Thomas Gallaudet also didn't realize that
home sign or methodical sign, it was called,
already had a grammar.
And as we heard earlier today,
people didn't realize that
until the 1960's, when American Sign Language
was finally analyzed by linguists.
It's this grammatical complexity--
this whole language aspect of ASL--
that is so important for hearing people to understand,
and, of course, for deaf children to learn
because it stimulates the language capacities
of the brain.
And if they learn ASL, they learn English much more easily.
And, as we all know, ASL was suppressed
for a long time all over the world.
I believe the Milan Conference was mentioned
this morning. I think that's where it happened.
And so, for a long time, deaf children
in their schools would sign to each other
but it had to be secret.
They weren't allowed to use ASL.
I didn't put that in my book,
but I think it's important that I knew it
because it was part of the story.
When you tell a story in any kind of book,
you may not put everything about the story
into the book, but you have to know it.
And this bridge to the hearing community--
that's so important;
and having enough materials in libraries
for deaf children is terribly important.
This book, "My Heart Glow,"
whose title was suggested by Harlan Lane,
whose book I used in much of my research.
And I contacted Harlan Lane
at the suggestion of Gary Wait,
who is the archivist
at the School for the Deaf in Hartford--
a very wonderful man who was a tremendous help to me.
And he also sent word about the book
out through the community--
to Alice in particular,
who was so good in making it known to people.
Gary Wait's resources at the School for the Deaf--
he has the library there,
which is almost like a little museum of deaf history.
It was so important to be there
and see all that material.
He told me that I should not include anything
about the suppression of ASL--
that this story, "My Heart Glow,"
should be a story of triumph over nothing --
of the creation of something
when there had been nothing.
So, armed with the materials I learned from him,
with a lot of reading of what books there are
about deaf history,
with Harlan Lane's book in particular,
I wrote this story.
It was published.
It was acquired by an editor, who was fired
about a few weeks later.
So it was shepherded through the publishing process
without an advocate.
It was published without any help at all
by this company, that more or less ignored it.
And then it was reviewed by hearing reviewers,
many of whom were confused
by the syntax in Alice's letters,
and I had read Alice's letters at Hartford,
so I knew that the syntax was the product of her mind--
of the way she was thinking.
They didn't understand that,
even though I said so in the author's note.
So there was some confusion, which was unfortunate.
And I was so, so gratified--so happy--when I learned
that the deaf community embraced the book.
And not only that--after it had gone out of print,
I heard from ASL Tales that they wanted to do a DVD of it
and try to get it back into the world with signing.
And I thought it was a fabulous idea
and Janice's work on this DVD is so brilliant,
and of course, the quality of storytelling
that is possible with ASL
is just beyond anything else that's available to anyone.
So, I think
deaf children and hearing children will both
benefit enormously from this kind of product
and from all of the others that I hope
are going to be available in libraries everywhere.
Maybe there will be questions for me?
I don't know. I think that's about all
I can pump out of my throat today.
I thank you so much for having me here
and as I say, it's been extraondinarily illuminating for me,
and I love being with you all today.
Are there any questions?
[applause] Thank you.
No? Okay.
Thank you again.
(Female Audience Member)
Hello there. I just wanted to tell you how delighted
I am that you've made this book possible
and many more works such as these.
I'm inspired by the fact that this book is there.
(Emily McCully)
Thank you so much.
(Female Audience Member)
My question is how long did it take you to complete that book?
(Emily McCully)
Well, this one... of course there's the research
and the reading process was several weeks,
and I don't usually have an advisor.
Gary Wait was my advisor on this one,
so we communicated back and forth.
And the trip to Hartford--that had to be scheduled,
and so on.
So, I would say two or three months for that.
And then, sitting down and doing a picture book
requires doing a "dummy,"
which means that I write the text
at the same time that I'm creating a little pretend book.
And the little pretend book is absolutely necessary
because a picture book is unlike most other books
in that it's like a little movie that's in my head,
and I have to get the movie down on paper
The movie is not projected. It involves the reader.
The book cannot be read
unless the reader wants to turn the page,
so I had to figure out how much material to put on a page.
I put so much on...well, I'll do it with this.
I make a dummy that looks sort of like this,
but it's just black and white sketches.
I put so much material on this page
so that the reader will want to know what happens.
The reader lifts the page, and for a few seconds
anything can happen!
Turns the page, more information--not too much,
just enough to create enough tension
so the reader wants to turn the page
and advance the story.
So, it's a complete collaboration with the reader.
And I have to figure out with the dummy--
I play with how much I put on this page and that page
and I go back and forth.
I tend to make little rough sketches
and tape them down, or tape down the words
with scotch tape
and then lift them up and move them around
if I have to.
And that process takes, oh maybe two or three weeks.
And then I send it to the publisher,
and the editor figures out what else I have to do
and what isn't working and what is working
and tells me and sends it back.
I make revisions--
that can take two or three more weeks--
when I finally get to the point
where I do the finished work.
And my emphasis in my books is
I want everything to look as if something is happening--
I want it to have a sense of action--
so I, to try to make things look spontaneous,
I make, for example, color choices as I'm painting.
I don't do color sketches,
I wait until I'm doing the finished paintings
and they take another six weeks.
Then I send that off. My work is done.
The book is separated. The colors are all separated
and printed - each color separately.
Probably these days in Asia.
The book doesn't come out for a full year
after I have finished my work.
And by that time, in this case,
the publisher had forgotten about it.
So, that can happen--
that's not such a good story.
So, I hope that this ASL Tales version has...
I hope it's going to have a lot of momentum
and will really reach as many people as it can.
Once again, thank you so much, Deaf Community,
for embracing it.
More questions?
(Male Audience Member)
I'm curious if you've had the experience...
oh sorry, one moment...
I'm curious if your work on this book
has made you inspired to learn more
about the deaf community and deaf culture?
(Emily McCully) Yes it has. Very much.
(Female voice, offscreen)
I believe we have two questions off to the side.
(Alice Hagemeyer)
Hello there.
For some of you who may not know,
her book is the very first book
written for children that is talking about deaf history,
and I applaud you for that.
I'm not sure if even you knew that.
Did you know that?
(Emily McCully)
No, I knew it was the first one about Alice and Thomas.
I didn't know it was the first, period.
That's amazing. That's terrible.
(Alice Hagemeyer)
Right, it's the first historical work for children--
first historical fiction book for children.
And also, it's very fortunate, and I'd like everyone to know
that the School for the Deaf has a museum,
which in the past, people weren't really cherishing
their heritage and the artifacts
and so oftentimes, things weren't preserved well
until Gary Wait, also a good friend of mine
got involved with their museum program
and made some drastic changes.
And having that material preserved,
made your research, I'm sure, much better,
so our thanks also have to go out to Gary.
Now, any of you who want to write
something like this,
I have to let you know about what wonderful resources
these deaf archives are.
Many places around the country don't have these
kinds of resources available as well.
And also I know deaf people are quite surprised
that a hearing author has written this,
rather than a deaf author.
But, it brings to bear the point that we must all work together--
that our communities have to work together.
I thank you so much for getting this story out there
and accessible to our deaf children.
And also, I have to applaud Janice Cole and
her company's work to put these in ASL versions.
This is a story that will never be outdated. Never.
(Emily McCully)
Thank you very, very much.
Yes, I meant to say earlier
that history is absolutely vital for everyone.
If you don't have a context for your life in the present,
you really don't have anything to stand on.
Often, when I'm talking to school kids,
I quote Cicero, who said,
"To not know what happened before one was born
is to always be a child."
So you know, in order to grow up,
children have to know history.
Especially their own history.
So, yeah, there has to be more of it.
Thank you.
(Margie English)
I have one small question if I may?
(Emily McCully)
You're entitled.
(Margie English)
As a person who has published a number of works
and illustrations. With this text, "My Heart Glow,"
and that one has not been widely marketed
and you said the reviewers weren't sure
quite how to take the book and the use of syntax by a deaf person
in the expression of the deaf person's thinking process.
Now in terms of future publishers of deaf works
by deaf authors, what would you say
to those future publishers
and these future authors,
that they could do to improve this process
so that it's more readily accepted?
And educate those reviewers as well,
so that it would be more appropriately received?
(Emily McCully)
Well, I think my publisher should have
provided something, I think, for reviewers
but they did not.
I thought and I hoped that the author's note
would suffice, but apparently it didn't.
Now, I'm saying only one or two people did this,
but it was significant that they didn't understand.
So, yeah, there has to be support of the book.
In the storytelling process, I didn't want to interrupt the story
with editorial comments or, you know, references to facts
or anything like that.
I wanted the story to flow, as a story must.
So it was up to the publisher, I think,
to provide the support material
that reviewers needed.
You know, adult books are often published
with reader's guides, guides for book clubs and so on.
So that kind of thing
that goes along with the book
but doesn't have to be part of the story
would be very helpful.
Thank you Janice.
[end of segment 4. go to segment 5]