Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa, by Josh Swiller

The Story: Josh was born deaf.  With the use of hearing aides, he was able to hear enough to get by and lead a “normal” life.  By that I mean that he went to public school and did everything that his hearing friends were doing.  It wasn’t until he was beyond high school that he ever even encountered other people who were non-hearing.

After college, he joined the Peace Corps.  His thought was that he wanted to end up in a place where his deafness really would be irrelevant.  He ended up in a village in Zambia that the Peace Corps had never been to before.  His “goal” was to get a community project going to dig a well for the village.  While everyone listened to him and were totally struck by the novelty of a white man, he came up against some pretty serious obstacles before he could really get anything done.

In his two years in Zambia, Josh made a great friend in Jere, the guy who ran the village clinic.  Their friendship and the goals that they make together were, for me, the heartbeat of this story.

As far as his deafness, at times it really was made irrelevant, but the big conflict in the end was (maybe) caused by the fact that Josh couldn’t hear and therefore couldn’t communicate with the people in the village.  All’s well that ends well, but it was probably mostly luck that makes Josh’s ending be one that even allowed him to write a book about his experiences.

What I Thought: I was really lucky the summer before I went into high school to be able to go on a trip to Africa.  I went to the Ivory Coast with a group of girls and we built a couple of churches in villages and became pretty involved in a local church in a larger city.  A lot of times I found myself laughing at Josh’s experiences because they echoed mine so well: kids following him around chanting their word for “white,” the best mangos on earth, crazy driving situations, the incredible lack of communication, villagers being grateful but expressing it so differently than Americans.  All of these things were things that we both experienced and I really enjoyed reading about that.

I thought that Josh probably went into everything with good motives, but I also felt like he kind of blew off what the Peace Corps told him just so he’d have an “accomplishment” to talk about after his two years.  I guess I feel like they have those rules in place for a reason, and him blowing them off put not only himself but a lot of the people in his village in quite a bit of danger.  I know that he was tired of the village’s “system” but when he was openly bucking the system, I felt annoyed at him.  Cultural sensitivity just didn’t seem to be on his radar at all. He really didn’t do a whole lot outside of cause trouble.  I wasn’t clear, in the end, if he realized that or not.

That being said, I thought that this memoir was open and honest and well written.  I was totally engaged the whole time I was reading it, I was just surprised at what a “what not to do” book it seemed to be.

Conclusion: For people that are interested in the Peace Corps or public services overseas should read this for sure.  Same with people that are non-hearing or involved in the deaf community.  I think that it’d be an educational experience.  Neither of these apply to me and I still enjoyed it and got a lot out of it, so if you just enjoy memoirs, I’d give this a look too.  Good stuff.