I was super excited to see my hometown of Rochester New York mentioned in both the deaf-gain piece as well as in Deaf Jam! I've mentioned before in class that Rochester has a large deaf community, but I wasn't aware until 2 days ago that that's maily because the Rochester Institute of Technology is home to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. But I digress.

"Here is a language that cannot exist in a book. It is the irony of ironies that the perfect example of orality is from a language that isn't oral." - Bob Holman 

While watching Deaf Jam, Kristen mentioned to think about how the film itself worked to engage viewers of both the deaf and hearing communities. I found this prompt particularly interesting because of my short history with filmmaking in high school. I loved watching the film and looking out for ways in which accessibility was characterized in the screenplay. For example, in the scene where Aneta walks with her brother by the park where a group is gathering to play drums, they both tell each other that they can feel the beat of the drums but wish that they could hear the accompanying voices. During this exchange, the audio softens and an underlying bass is left so that the hearing audience can feel the drums but barely make out the voices of the musicians as they fade away.

Since I had already watched Deaf Jam, and I like spending (probably far too much) of my time on YouTube and particularly amongst channels with disability content, I was curious to see what I would discover if I searched for ASL poetry, as per Kristin's suggestion. The very first link on the page (I literally searched "ASL Poetry"), lead me down a super interesting rabbit hole (as YouTube does). Here is a link to the video I watched (of a poem titled "Deaf Heart"). The poet mentioned in her video that she didn't have an English translation of the poem, and so encouraged viewers to comment their interpretation.

Wooofff, ok, I was not anticipacting the question of "What is disability culture" to have such complicated implicatIons. Honestly, I'm a little baffled on how to approach this query however, one section of the reading did stick out to me in particular so I guess I'll begin there. The author was discussing a memory of Rodney leading a workshop, and how in that moment she began to appreciate the diverse array of perspectives towards disability present in the room. The description made me think of a line from a book I'm reading that says 'To have pain is to have certainty, to hear about other's pain is to have doubt'. I feel like a similar principle can be applied to the concept of disability culture.

“Disability culture is not a thing, but a process.” It will also take a more in-depth process for me to fully grasp the concept of this claim. Throughout this introduction to the book Disability Culture and Community Performance, I was waiting for Petra Kuppers to unveil her key point that would diminish my confusion. However, what I now realize is that maybe the fog of navigating her writing is mimicking the troubles trying to define the disability community and disability culture. She makes clear that the “process” of disability culture is undoing the “history of exclusions” that people with disabilities experience when they are limited by the able-bodied world around them.

Well, now I am more confused than ever. I expected Petra's introduction to resolve my incomplete understanding of disability culture, but it certainly did not do that. To begin with, Petra asserts that there is no singular disability culture; disability cultures are numerous and exist in different capacities and spaces. Disability culture is not exclusive to disabled people alone and can include non-disabled "allies" (not a fan of this word) of the disability community. Disability culture is also a process, that evolves and shapes itself to historical times and cultural environments. Nonetheless, disability culture tries to eliminate other forms of exclusion –race, class, sexuality, etc.– to focus on the corporeal self alone.

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