Böcker av Susan Burch

Susan Burch's new collection, Keeping Score: Angry Tanka, answers the question: Why do we need angry tanka? We need angry tanka because they are better than the alternatives-violence or passive-aggressive pretense. Angry tanka do not mince words. They do not hide behind innuendo or avoid hurting. They are honest and release emotional truths we can no longer mask. A good venting through an angry tanka clears the air and makes way for the start of a new day. Sometimes, after a storm, there's no other way to let yourself find the peace and joy of life you deserve. -Randy Brooks, Teacher, Poet, & Editor

Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, Susan Burch reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the places that held them. In so doing, Committed expands the boundaries of Native American history, disability studies, and US social and cultural history generally.

Presents the story of Junius Wilson, a deaf man accused in 1925 of attempted rape, found insane at a lunacy hearing, committed to the criminal ward of the State Hospital for the Colored Insane, castrated, forced to labor for the institution, and held at the hospital for more than seven decades.

The author demonstrates that in 19th and 20th centuries and contrary to popular belief, the Deaf community defended its use of sign language as a distinctive form of communication, thus forming a collective Deaf consciousness, identity, and political organization.