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Betty G Miller Identity

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Betty G. Miller had always lived within other people’s worlds. Born deaf, her life was located within large communities of people who could hear. In a world of muffled, indistinct sound, Miller forcibly learned to become something she would never be. Yet even as the society left her spirit wounded, visual art gave her wings to soar. Noted for her gifted observatory skills and her desire to communicate her experiences back to the world in a visually accessible manner, Miller chose to become a visual artist right after her college graduation. She retraced the experiences of her youth and perpetually identified herself through her art works. By criticizing an oral-based education, recording the acts of injustice, displaying the social alienation, …show more content…

After a few years in the Bell School, her parents switched her into a regular mainstream school. She was a successful student who even went to another school in the evening to be tutored in speech. However, as she was the only Deaf student in the class, she missed out the sense of belonging. Her feeling of stigmatization and estrangement is featured in her untitled multimedia piece (Appendix 3). The metal gird in front of the static eyes indicates the inability to have full and equal access to the world. The Deaf portrait is framed with Miller’s textual refrain of “MAMA. PAPA. God made Deaf. You want me talk, talk, talk. Me fail…” It is as if the child in the artwork is trying to teach the parents as well as the society to consider deafness as one of God’s designs. In a school that does not sign, a communication barrier grew between Miller and the students. The feeling of alienation was as painful as the physical abuse she experienced in the Bell School. At the outer border of the piece, a curse word appears between the texts— monosyllabic words practiced over and over again among Deaf people during speech class, which sounded out in an unnatural and methodical manner. The profanity exemplifies the frustration Miller felt by the abysmal chasm that had grown between the society and her. The isolation felt by Miller is analogous to that of David Sedaris in his book Me Talk Pretty One Day. In the book which deals with his personal experience in Paris, Sedaris felt “not unlike Pa Kettle trapped backstage after a fashion show” on the first day of the French class. Among young, good-looking students who seemed to be fluent in French, he felt discomfort and detached. Sedaris, however, is different from Miller in that solidarity took place between the students and him due to the teacher who belittled and maltreated everyone (Sedaris). Miller’s suffering lasted until she

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