Book Review: The Quest for Edith Ackers (Michael Uniacke)Reviewed by Michael NorthenIncluded in John Lee Clark's recent anthology Deaf Lit Extravaganza is Australian writer Michael Uniacke's short story "The Incontestable Superiority." The story focuses on an event famous in Deaf culture history but little known by the general public, the 1880 Second International Conference on Education of the Deaf held in Milan. The tale is told through the eyes of David Archer, a young eager-beaver newspaper reporter from Liverpool who, through happenstance, is assigned to cover the conference because he is the only one on the staff able to speak Italian. The conference is billed as the unveiling of a new oral educational method for deaf children. Like most people of his age, Archer assumes that education that allows deaf children to learn to speak and integrate into society would be an obvious boon. What he discovers at the conference, however, are Edward Gallaudet and a group of deaf individuals including some who communicate quite well by signing and oppose the oral method that would essentially outlaw their means of communication. Moreover, the deaf representatives are being prevented by those running the conference from presenting their point of view. The story ends with Archer writing an article for his newspaper presenting both viewpoints and being fired as a result. Now in his new novella, The Quest for Edith Ackers (2014), Uniacke gives his disgraced reporter a second chance. Archer is picked up by a small town newspaper that is willing to give him another try and hums along quite well at his new position until he hears of another conference on the education of deaf children scheduled to occur in London. The reporter is chomping at the bit to be able to attend the conference and attempt to redeem himself, but the newspaper's editor sees nothing relevant to local news in the event and refuses to assign him to the story. Archer requests leave to go see his ailing mother, who lives near where the event take place and, on the sly, attends the conference. There he meets Rev. Frederick Gilby, a signing minister who is favorable to the concerns of the deaf community and Sophie Westmore, the attractive daughter of deaf parents — a CODA in today's terminology. By in large, however, the conference is still heavily tilted towards oralism, and the main speaker Benjamin St John Ackers, whom Archers recognizes from Milan, is especially adamant, describing how the oral method of education has been so successful with his own daughter, that he feels it imperative this be adopted as the standard method of deaf education. When someone shouts from the audience for Ackers to bring in his daughter and let everyone see the results of the methods for themselves, he become furious and has to be asked to sit down. Archer, the story's narrator relates: I turned to Miss Westmore. "Ackers' daughter. Do you know who she is? Where she is? Is she of age?" She looked at me curiously. "Nobody knows anything about her." Then it flashed before me in an instant. How old would be Ackers' daughter? Perhaps in her twenties? Would she be of an independent age, able to speak her mind as she pleased? What if she were married? Could she articulate? How fluent was her speech? Was she in fact the oral success her father was insisting she was? What a story of enormous interest. Find Ackers' daughter, and interview her! Thus begins the titular plot line, The Quest for Edith Ackers. I won't spoil the book for potential readers by describing the details of the pursuit that Archer, with the assistance of Rev. Gilby and Ms. Westmore engage in nor the results of that search, but suffice it to say that along the way Archer discovers that — no differently than in twenty-first century politics — public policy is always linked to the interests of those with money and power, and that opposing it comes at a cost. It is a common observation that many readers who would never pick up a history book out of choice will nevertheless read historical novels — witness the recent rash of tales set in Tudor England. Recognizing this Uniacke, an interpreter of Australian sign language, has chosen fiction as the vehicle for education about the history of Deaf culture and some of the basics of the dispute between advocates for manual language (i.e. sign language) and those championing oral language. This is far from easy to do and perhaps helps explain why there are considerably more science fiction novels that tackle issues of disability than historical novels. The best known of these attempts may be some of the short stories in Anne Finger's collection Call Me Ahab, but where Finger is attempting to use postmodern literary techniques to re-imagine history, Uniacke wants to get across basic facts about the history of Deaf culture — including the very fact that there is a long standing history. Beyond knowledge and understanding of the historical events themselves, this requires two things of Uniacke. The first is that he tell an entertaining story that will hold the reader's attention without violating any known facts. The second is that through his use of language, he is able to evoke the spirit of the times themselves. He does both of these extremely well. The first task Uniacke accomplishes through the creation of David Archer, the young British reporter who encounters the real of historical figures Rev. Gilby and Benjamin Ackers in the Exeter environs where deaf education at the time was centered in Great Britain. Archer represents that sense of personal manifest destiny familiar to many Americans. When the reader first meets him in his assignment to the Milan conference he announces, "As a journalist I would be on the scene in this golden age of discovery and development, reporting to all the world my solid, solid, concise yet fluent prose. Why, I fancied I could see the opening lines of my splendid report: NEW INSTRUCTION METHOD TO ENABLE DEAF-MUTES TO SPEAK." Though a bit chastened when we meet him again in The Quest for Edith Ackers, Archer is still a character who struggles to hide his impetuosity beneath a more formal Victorian exterior and his dreams of a possible romance provide Uniacke additional opportunity to meld fiction and history. Uniacke's choice of a first person narrative is a particularly effective hook. It is not just that, given his position as a reporter, readers are allowed to view the goings on of the conference in Exeter. It is that while the average reader unacquainted with Deaf culture may feel a slight superiority to Archer in his general naiveté about life, they are likely to find they themselves are complicit with him in their views about sign language. Admitting that as a reporter he is obligated to look at both sides of a question Archer nevertheless remarks: The oralists' argument however were many, and to my enquiring mind, the more convincing. Signs were unnatural; signs lacked connection with thought and feeling; signs could not convey abstract though; signs lacked the precision of speech and speech was what distinguished us from animals and signs excluded the deaf from speech which was the common heritage of all mankind. But, of course, this was so doubtlessly true that there scarce appeared cause for argument. While few contemporary readers would probably go so far as to equate sign language with animal communication, in today's ongoing debate over cochlear implants in the United States, they might find themselves saying about the benefits of the cochlear implants for young deaf children, "this was so doubtless true that there scarce appeared cause for argument." Uniacke puts the reader in the position of having to identify with Archer and, as a result, reading the story is not just Archer's education but our own. Implicit in the creation of Archer and the re-creation of his times is Uniacke's ability to create the semblance of Victorian speech appropriate for the young upwardly-mobile protagonist. Uniacke establishes this feel in the opening paragraphs of the story in which Archer is being interviewed by the editor of a newspaper for a potential job. Presently he [the editor] emitted a short "harrump", put down my letter, and turned in his chair to the window behind him. I could see part of the view of the bustle of the Commercial-road, and I could hear the faint sounds of the hansom-cabs and the clip-clop of the horses. Soon he removed his spectacles, and waved them about. "An interesting account of your fledgling career, Mr Archer," he said, turning to face me again. "Why did you choose journalism?" "Sir, it wants less than two decades to the end of this nineteenth century," I replied. "It is an exciting age of discovery. Of scientific advance. Of social theory. It is journalists who bring the news of such discoveries to the world." In these descriptions, Uniacke's experience as the writer of The Unguarded Quarter, a blog that frequently employs humor and satire, come in handy. His ability to allow the reader to see humor in Archer's youthful attempts at self-importance keeps what could otherwise come across as stuffy or teacherly writing fresh and interesting. As real life reporter Margalit Fox so wonderfully describes in Talking Hands, her account of linguists' attempts to visually record and describe Bedouin sign language in the village of Al-Sayyid, the process of convincing the public that sign languages are indeed full fledged languages is still an ongoing task. In this milieu, Uniacke has provided through his novella an enjoyable gateway into understanding both the history of sign languages and some of the basic issue surrounding the position of those who advocate for their recognition as a languages on par with oral ones. It is an enjoyable read and, without giving up anything more about the plot, I will add that at the end of the story, David Archer boards a boat for Australia. It looks like the third part of a trilogy is in the making. The Quest for Edith Ackers will be available online in the near future.
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