A stunning debut that “brims with the talent and generosity of a living classic” (Ilya Kaminsky), from an award-winning DeafBlind poet. Formally restless and relentlessly instructive, How to Communicate is a dynamic journey through language, community, and the unfolding of an identity. Poet John Lee Clark pivots from inventive forms inspired by the braille slate to sensuous prose poems to pathbreaking translations from ASL and Protactile, a language built on touch. Amid the astonishing task of constructing a new canon, Clark reveals a radically commonplace life—the vagaries of family, grief, and small delights: visiting a museum, knitting, and, once, encountering a ghost in a gas station. A rare work of transformation and necessary discovery, How to Communicate offers a “steadily revelatory gift” (Carl Phillips). From “To Ask” The ASL words Braille and Forgive are almost the same so it was like I was saying forgive me while brushing my fingers over the dots Forgive me forgive me forgive me
A revelatory collection of essays on the DeafBlind experience and the untapped potential of a new tactile language. Born Deaf into an ASL-speaking family and blind by adolescence, John Lee Clark learned to embrace the possibilities of his tactile world. He is on the frontlines of the Protactile movement, which gave birth to an unprecedented language and way of life based on physical connection. In a series of paradigm-shifting essays, Clark reports on seismic developments within the DeafBlind community and challenges the limitations of sighted and hearing norms. In "Against Access," he interrogates the prevailing advocacy for "accessibility" that re-creates a shadow of a hearing-sighted experience, and in "Tactile Art," he describes his relationship to visual art and breathtaking encounters with tactile sculpture. He offers a brief history of the term "DeafBlind," distills societal discrimination against DeafBlind people into "Distantism," sheds light on the riches of online community, and advocates for "Co-Navigation," a new way of exploring the world together without a traditional guide. Touch the Future brims with passion, energy, humor, and imagination as Clark takes us by the hand and welcomes us into the exciting landscape of Protactile communication. A distinct language of taps, signs, and reciprocal contact, Protactile emerged from the inadequacies of ASL—a visual language even when pressed into someone’s hand—with the power to upend centuries of DeafBlind isolation. As warm and witty as he is radical and inspiring, Clark encourages us—disabled and non-disabled alike—to reject stigma and discover the ways we are connected. Touch the Future is a dynamic appeal to rethink the meanings of disability, access, language, and inclusivity, and to reach for a future we can create together.
Follows the campaigns of Major George Rogers Clark whose small army of Virginians captured several frontier forts for the colonists during the Revolution.
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