An insightful, bighearted memoir that skillfully interrogates his own experience — and the experience of a multitude of others — of being deaf in today’s world. Both expansive and precise ... Lucidly braids all of this into an effortless, often lyrical account ... A transformative story for all readers, offering an opportunity to discover the missing sounds and misunderstandings of their own experience — and begin to comprehend what it means to truly listen.
The Quiet Ear lacks the intellectual rigor and finely wrought prose of Leland and Jones’s memoirs, as well as other works such as Jan Grue’s I Live a Life Like Yours and Emily Rapp Black’s Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg. But the tact and tenderness with which Antrobus writes about his wounded younger self and his deaf coming-of-age make the memoir a notable addition to the subgenre.
Compact, powerful ... What emerges most consistently from this moving book is his need to be met on his own terms, in a territory that he is given the freedom to map for himself.
Through this wise, intimate and questing book, Antrobus goes from being a six-year-old able to find magic in such a diagnosis, to a poet and educator who would like people to reassess how they see deafness ... With The Quiet Ear, he has made a book for the boy he was, but he’s also given other readers an insight into life both between cultures and between sounds.
Deeply intimate, expansive, and genre-defying ... A poetic reckoning ... Every page pulses with vulnerability and insight ... Antrobus reveals the deep richness found by those who listen differently. He dismantles the myths around 'hearing loss' and reclaims deafness as a cultural, linguistic and poetic space ... One of the most powerful threads in the book is Antrobus’s exploration of his Jamaican-British identity as a deaf man ... Laced with humour or quiet resistance ... The relationship with and loss of his father are rendered with aching honesty, shadowed by violence and alcoholism ... In counterpoint, the passages about his young son are luminous with patience and play ... A moving reflection on inheritance ... Antrobus writes with exquisite rhythm and restraint ... A moving and essential work ... A quiet revolution.
A a marvelous sort of buoy that consciously and ecstatically renders individuals in Antrobus’ life—family members, teachers, friends, lovers and writers—who have helped him give voice to his experiences and, in a very real way, to find himself. Antrobus’ negotiation of the complicated features of his identity, as well as his vulnerability and sheer skill as a writer, make this slim volume utterly moving and remarkable.
