Artists

Storytellers

Storytelling is a means of giving meaning to human experience. Because storytelling requires both a teller and an interlocutor, it is rooted in social interaction. Storytelling offers connection and builds community. These are universal truths about storytelling, and they apply to the Deaf culture with a particular resonance. To communicate the idea that storytelling involves cognitive function, physical performance, and emotional response, researchers have said that in storytelling an intersection of head, hands, and heart occurs. This intersection is especially evident in the work of Deaf storytellers who use gestures, mime, signs, facial expressions, and sometimes spoken language to share narratives that move their audiences to laughter, tears, or contemplation. Some observers suggest that signed storytelling emerged historically at residential Deaf schools where older students mimicked teachers, shared experiences, and passed on earned wisdom. According to some sources, everyone in Deaf culture is a storyteller, but a few have the ability to sign a story with such skill and grace that they are language artists. They become professional storytellers.

As entertainers, Deaf storytellers participate in storytelling events on national and international levels. Some of these events are exclusive to Deaf storytellers; others showcase the talent of both Deaf and hearing storytellers. Deaf storytellers use a variety of stories, including narratives of personal experience, original creations from the teller’s imagination, retellings of traditional stories from Deaf culture, and translations and adaptations of stories that originated in other cultures (often in print in literate cultures). They may also use types of stories that are specific to the Deaf community such as A to Z handshape stories, in which each sign represents one of the 26 handshapes in the manual alphabet; number handshape stories, in which each sign includes a handshape that represents a number from 1 to 15 or higher; or classifier stories told exclusively with handshapes that look like an object, a person, or an animal, and move in the natural manner that object, person, or animal moves.

Deaf storytellers also serve purposes other than entertainment. They foster a sense of identity and Deaf storytellers remind their Deaf audiences of shared experiences, assuring them that they are not [Page 43]alone but belong to a community that interprets and comprehends the world in a similar manner. Ben Bahan points out that the tales also often carry embedded messages that suggest ways of behaving and strategies for surviving as members of a minority culture in a world dominated by different cultural values and world knowledge. Storytellers also preserve Deaf history, and as a result, they played an especially important role before the accessibility of video recording equipment.

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