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Published Oct 2023
208 pages
Genre: Essays
Publication Information
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.
"DeafBlind poet Clark (How to Communicate) serves up passionate meditations on the DeafBlind Protactile movement...Lucid and incisive, this is not to be missed." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A Deaf-Blind poet and teacher tells his story with fervor and wisdom...Throughout this lively journey, Clark...relishes his ability to tell tales, break rules, and possibly change the world...An epic and riotous book. Ignore it, and you might get left behind." —Kirkus Reviews
"John Lee Clark's fervent manifesto for the Protactile language and movement will blow your mind, enliven your body, and connect you to other people in unexpected ways. Touch the Future is a book that enlarges the human world."
―Edward Hirsch, author of Stranger by Night
"John Lee Clark's essays radiate with excitement and urgency. Tenderly documenting the emerging social movement of Protactile, they call upon us all to think about distance, power, and access in much bolder ways. To read Clark is not simply to be taught something by him, but to find yourself immersed and seeking alongside him―you don't just learn, you come away changed."
―Katie Booth, author of The Invention of Miracles
"Touch the Future opens doors to the multiple worlds of disability…This is a book for anyone who is interested in the life of the imagination and the mind."
―Stephen Kuusisto, author of Eavesdropping
This information about Touch the Future was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
John Lee Clark is an American DeafBlind poet, writer, and activist from Minnesota. He is the author of Suddenly Slow and Where I Stand: On the Signing Community and My DeafBlind Experience, and the editor of anthologies Deaf American Poetry and Deaf Lit Extravaganza.
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