The latest release from Headline Books and Tinder Press, A Sign of Her Own from author Sarah Marsh, sees a Deaf woman caught between the mentor of her past, now seeking her validation, and the future she wants for herself.
In A Sign of Her Own, and drawing upon her own experiences as growing up deaf, Marsh conjures forth Ellen Lark, a woman who became deaf as a young child and dealt with bullying, isolation, and trauma as a result. Now an adult, we meet Ellen engaged to a suitable young man and finding her place in the world, just in time for her to clash with Alexander Graham Bell, widely-noted inventor of the telephone.
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While Bell is credited with his invention, what’s more startling is his history of anti-deaf rhetoric and eugenics relating to Deaf individuals – “”Those who believe as I do, that the production of a defective race of human beings would be a great calamity to the world, will examine carefully the causes that will lead to the intermarriage of the deaf with the object of applying a remedy”, he is quoted as stating with regards to allowing Deaf and non-Deaf individuals to marry and have children.
Marsh treats this considerately and thoughtfully – A Sign of Her Own‘s Bell is not cartoonishly evil, nor painfully misunderstood, instead acting as a beacon for society’s preconceptions about deafness and happy to capitalise upon them for fame and fortune, even if it means betrayal of the pupils he once espoused to care about.
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Marsh is slow – too slow in some cases – to allow the plot of A Sign of Her Own to unfold, and the vacillation between Ellen’s tumultuous childhood and her adult experiences can become dizzying at times, but Ellen proves to be a useful anchor amidst the changes, someone who slowly and surely improves in self-possession and confidence, using the tools Bell taught her to carve out a life for herself.
Although it suffers from pacing issues, A Sign of Her Own is both a luminous examination of Deaf identity through a historical lens and also a deeper exploration of Bell’s prejudices. Ellen Lark may not be a real historical person, but Marsh’s biggest triumph is imbuing her with human pathos and spirit, allowing Ellen to emerge from others’ preconceptions of her abilities, marching forward in the future on her own terms and no one else’s.
A Sign of Her Own is out now from Tinder Books.
