i said geography
I cried over pictures of home and an alumni magazine in the mail. More people from my graduating class are getting married or having children. My city, my Greensboro, taking root and building a new museum, new restaurants, even a hookah bar. Val and Kevin are moving in together. Nate lives on Hill Street, just across the cemetery from my old place, but I cannot walk across the gnarled trees and ancient stones to see him. That was the cemetery where he, James, and I watched the fireworks and decided what we wanted to be independent from. I said "geography."
Before there was Greensboro, before there was Spain, before there was New York, there was a girl who sat in a room and wrote in spiral bound notebooks. An agent read my manuscript and we talked about it today. "You are a good writer," he said. He liked the scene with the boy on the roof and the part about my father's accident. He says I have excellent technique. The part about Elisabeth Zinser made him cry.
[Elizabeth Zinser was a hearing woman who, in 1988, was chosen to be the President of Gallaudet University, the all-deaf school where my parents met. The students protested her selection and started the "Deaf President Now" movement, the Selma of the Deaf Rights movement. Zinser resigned and went away, leaving her position open for a deaf candidate. Zinser had been hired by Gallaudet away from UNCG. For awhile I was obsessed with finding her. I met people who had worked with her, gathered recollections and anecdotes. I scoured the internet and traced her post-Gallaudet career. I was obsessed with her because she was a shadow for me, hearing in a deaf world, knowing that no matter how she worked she'd never belong there. Knowing that she was always an impostor. A usurper. Writing a narrative that was not hers.]
I thought that section was the poorest of the whole book. The agent read about my father, my first love, the first time I understood death. But Elizabeth Zinser made him cry. Like how I can sort through old photographs and diaries long since abandoned, but it is news of a new train station in Greensboro that makes me cry.
Before there was Greensboro, before there was Spain, before there was New York, there was a girl who sat in a room and wrote in spiral bound notebooks. An agent read my manuscript and we talked about it today. "You are a good writer," he said. He liked the scene with the boy on the roof and the part about my father's accident. He says I have excellent technique. The part about Elisabeth Zinser made him cry.
[Elizabeth Zinser was a hearing woman who, in 1988, was chosen to be the President of Gallaudet University, the all-deaf school where my parents met. The students protested her selection and started the "Deaf President Now" movement, the Selma of the Deaf Rights movement. Zinser resigned and went away, leaving her position open for a deaf candidate. Zinser had been hired by Gallaudet away from UNCG. For awhile I was obsessed with finding her. I met people who had worked with her, gathered recollections and anecdotes. I scoured the internet and traced her post-Gallaudet career. I was obsessed with her because she was a shadow for me, hearing in a deaf world, knowing that no matter how she worked she'd never belong there. Knowing that she was always an impostor. A usurper. Writing a narrative that was not hers.]
I thought that section was the poorest of the whole book. The agent read about my father, my first love, the first time I understood death. But Elizabeth Zinser made him cry. Like how I can sort through old photographs and diaries long since abandoned, but it is news of a new train station in Greensboro that makes me cry.