Tag: deafness

Extending Our Selves

SoutherlyBlog

by Jessica White Every afternoon after school, I changed my black school shoes for joggers and ran through the paddocks for half an hour. On weekends I ran through the hills at the back of our house, my joggers slipping on bark and leaf litter. Heat rose from the earth and coiled around my ankles. Slabs of granite gave off a warm, clean scent and cicadas wove a thicket of sound. At my footfall, roos bounded away and wild goats stepped nervously through pine trees. On hot summer days, I defied my mother and ran out in the baking heat.…

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Romance and the Deaf Girl

SoutherlyBlog

by Jessica White The bus trip from our family property to primary school in town took forty minutes, and with my siblings and cousins aboard, it was a noisy journey. I sat on the left hand side of the bus, so that if someone spoke to me I’d be able to hear them with the ear that still had some hearing. Usually, I found it too hard to join in so I read my book, or looked at the passing grey-green gum trees, low granite outcrops dotted with prickly pear and stands of pine trees, or paddocks crammed with rust-coloured…

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Fierce/Peace: The Creativity of Disability

SoutherlyBlog

by Jessica White Everything begins with the body. With lying on a trampoline on a spring morning, the season in which wattle bursts across dun hills and chilly air tickles bare legs. Except now it scrapes my cheeks and the clear light hurts my eyes. An ache spills from my shoulders, across my neck and down my back. My mother, sensing something is wrong, scoops me up and takes me to the local doctor in town, a half-hour drive away on gravel roads. He sends us to the regional hospital, another hour’s drive. They stick a needle in my back…

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