Articulate
A Deaf Memoir of Voice
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews Named a Notable Book of 2025 by the Washington Post A deaf writer’s exploration of language, communication, and what it means to be articulate—and her journey to reclaim her voice
Rachel Kolb was born profoundly deaf the same year that the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, and she grew up as part of the first generation of deaf people with legal rights to accessibility services. Still, from a young age, she contorted herself to expectations set by a world that prioritizes hearing people. So even while she found clarity and meaning in American Sign Language (ASL) and written literature, she learned to speak through speech therapy and to piece together missing sounds through lipreading and an eventual cochlear implant.
Now, in Articulate, Kolb blends personal narrative with commentary to explore the different layers of deafness, language, and voice. She tells the story of how, over time, she came to realize that clear or articulate self-expression isn’t just a static pinnacle to reach, a set of words to pronounce correctly, but rather a living and breathing process that happens between individual human beings. In chronicling her own voice and the many ways she’s come to understand it, Kolb illuminates the stakes and complexities of finding mutual and reciprocal forms of communication.
Part memoir, part cultural exploration, Articulate details a life lived among words in varied sensory forms and considers why and how those words matter. Told through rich storytelling, analysis, and humor, this is a linguistic coming-of-age in both Deaf and hearing worlds, challenging us to consider how language expresses our humanity—and offering more ways we might exist together.
This unforgettable memoir about disability and the power of words challenges our assumptions about:
American Sign Language (ASL): The clarity and meaning found in a visual language, and the vibrant Deaf community that surrounds it.A Cochlear Implant Journey: The complex reality of gaining a “bionic ear” as an adult, from the first electric jolts of sound to a new understanding of hearing.The Meaning of Voice: A deep dive into what it truly means to be “articulate” when communication happens through speech therapy, lipreading, writing, and signing.Identity and Belonging: Navigating the in-between spaces of Deaf and hearing worlds as part of the first ADA generation with legal rights to accessibility.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this impressive debut, Kolb reflects on being deaf in a hearing world. Born in 1990, the same year the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, Kolb writes firsthand about the successes and shortcomings of its attempts to bridge accessibility gaps in American life. She grew up in New Mexico with hearing parents and a hearing sister, and attended the New Mexico School for the Deaf's preschool in Albuquerque before being shunted to public school in first grade, which led her to cherish "those hazy days at the preschool where everyone had known how to sign." As Kolb charts her journey to Stanford, then Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and Emory University as a PhD candidate, she goes deep on the methods of communication that aided her, mixing cultural histories of American Sign Language, lipreading, and finger spelling—including an account of attempts to ban ASL in U.S. schools for deaf students by so-called "oralists"—with personal anecdotes about the practices. Along the way, Kolb chronicles the stigma, both obvious and subtle, that deaf people endure from hearing individuals and their deaf peers alike. (In one scene, her classmates decry an acquaintance's cochlear implants: "Where's your Deaf pride?") Accessible, fascinating, and heartfelt, this thorough examination of contemporary Deafness moves and edifies in equal measure. It's required reading.
