The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa | 
 enlarge | Author: Josh Swiller
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $7.00
You Save: $7.00 (50%)
New (39) Used (24) from $5.58
Avg. Customer Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 118272
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0805082107
Dewey Decimal Number: 968.94042
EAN: 9780805082104
ASIN: 0805082107
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A young man’s quest to reconcile his deafness in an unforgiving world leads to a remarkable sojourn in a remote African village that pulsates with beauty and violence These are hearing aids. They take the sounds of the world and amplify them.” Josh Swiller recited this speech to himself on the day he arrived in Mununga, a dusty village on the shores of Lake Mweru. Deaf since a young age, Swiller spent his formative years in frustrated limbo on the sidelines of the hearing world, encouraged by his family to use lipreading and the strident approximations of hearing aids to blend in. It didn’t work. So he decided to ditch the well-trodden path after college, setting out to find a place so far removed that his deafness would become irrelevant.
That place turned out to be Zambia, where Swiller worked as a Peace Corps volunteer for two years. There he would encounter a world where violence, disease, and poverty were the mundane facts of life. But despite the culture shock, Swiller finally commanded attention—everyone always listened carefully to the white man, even if they didn’t always follow his instruction. Spending his days working in the health clinic with Augustine Jere, a chubby, world-weary chess aficionado and a steadfast friend, Swiller had finally found, he believed, a place where his deafness didn’t interfere, a place he could call home. Until, that is, a nightmarish incident blasted away his newfound convictions.
At once a poignant account of friendship through adversity, a hilarious comedy of errors, and a gripping narrative of escalating violence, The Unheard is an unforgettable story from a noteworthy new talent.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...
A Mother's Nightmare June 30, 2008
I found Josh Swiller's riveting and beautifully written account of his Peace Corps service in Eastern Africa impossible to put down. Swiller weaves insight about deafness brilliantly into his story, giving the reader an insider's perspective on being deaf in any and every possible situation. As the mother of a present Peace Corps Volunteer, I couldn't help but imagine how Josh's mother might have been feeling during his two years in Africa. What did she know about his experience? Was she able to communicate with him? Did he protect her by not divulging details of the danger? While he doesn't tell the reader much about his mother in his book, I found myself wondering about her beyond the book. And...I have continued to think deeply about his experience long after reading his final words. I'm ready to read whatever Swiller publishes next!
A Great Read May 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love this book. I've recommended it to just about everyone I've spoken to since I finished it. It is a wonderful memoir. It is hard to put down, and it's incredible to reflect on.
Read it.
From a Psychotherapist May 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a Psychotherapist, I would recommend this book to anyone with a hearing problem or anyone who has a child with a hearing problem. I also would recommend it to anyone who needed to be inspired by the human spirit and to see that the limits of our coping capacities are beyond anything we can imagine.
a must read May 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Josh Swiller's account of his Peace Corps years is a wonderful insight into how he coped with volunteering in an African village as a young deaf man. It is a real page turner. A 5 star read!
A comedy of errors, a coming-of-age story, and a touching tribute to a strange piece of paradise. April 2, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Review originally published in the Hipster Book Club, April 2008.
Josh Swiller's memoir, The Unheard, tells the story of his two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mununga, a dusty Zambian village home to tribal factions and a host of refugees from neighboring Zaire. Deaf since childhood, Josh was raised by devoted parents who trained him to speak and lip-read with the assistance of hearing aids. Raised to fit into the hearing world, he attended Yale but encountered feelings of isolation and frustration toward heavily-accented professors who spoke into chalkboards. In graduate school at Gallaudet University, he attempted to immerse himself in a new Deaf community but discovered that he was just as isolated in a world that spoke exclusively American Sign Language. So Josh went to Africa to find "a place past deafness."
After a ten-week training course, Josh was off to inspire a sense of community ownership in Mununga, with a charter to organize the villagers to build their first community infrastructure: wells to provide fresh water to the disease-ridden community. The villagers, led by politicians whose primary concern was getting their rake of the banana wine production, were perplexed that the white man didn't have the money and power to give them a well. Politicians had deep-seated tribal affairs to sort out and were suspicious of Josh's motives in offering "help" to the community without bringing along cash and resources. Josh writes of the plight of the Africans with a voice of introspection and humor. His teaching experience required navigating "an educational system based, apparently, on the principles of unlimited recess." By keeping the tone light, Josh conveys profound insights with nary a trace of pity for himself or the economically ravaged country.
For his part, Josh was able to speak Bemba, the tribal language, better than any of his fellow volunteers. Bemba was just another series of verbal sounds Josh had to perform without hearing. In the village and even the larger city centers of Africa, background noise was low, so Josh was able to distinguish sounds more easily. He also noted that people tended to speak to him slowly and directly, further aiding his comprehension.
Josh formed warm friendships with his cook, houseboy, and fellow health clinic worker Jere. In many ways, The Unheard is the story of Josh's friendship with this steadfast and wise chess player. Jere was Josh's constant ally throughout his struggles fighting for resources, adhering to tribal customs, and maneuvering against a ferocious tribal leader out to destroy Josh for his own purposes. Josh learned to adapt his style to reach the Africans in any way possible. In one of his more successful moves, he fosters cultural exchange by passing out a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition to his male students.
The zenith of Josh's experience in Africa was the construction of a local clinic for which Josh put his own Peace Corps career on the line. He self-funded the effort via outside grants in quasi-violation of bureaucratic red tape. Throughout his time in Mununga, Josh wrestled with his inability to effect lasting change against a tidal wave of cultural differences. He finally acquiesced to the urgings of his friend Jere to make one small, practical contribution to the village by building a clinic. Josh's arch nemesis, the tribal leader Boniface, manipulated both the Peace Corps volunteer and the villagers throughout the process, misappropriating project supplies and resources, and finally sabotaging the project in a climactic lynch mob of violence. For Josh, the after effects were devastating. He was forced to suppress his personal outrage and again adhere to the advice of his friend Jere, who continually encouraged Josh to adapt to the local system. Josh learned that subtly outwitting Boniface at his own game was much more effective than pursing any official means of justice.
Josh Swiller did indeed find a place past deafness in the lakeside village of Mununga, Zambia. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in a war-torn, disease-ravaged region in which being light-skinned and American was strange enough that no one bothered to alienate him based on deafness. In his memoir, he casts a critical eye at the Peace Corps process as well as his own conduct in Africa. Josh recognizes that he had naive goals when he first arrived; learning how to work within the system was an arduous process. He balances his criticism of the local government corruption and his frustration at the lack of industrial progress with his genuine awe and appreciation for the beauty and friendship he found in Mununga. The Unheard is at once a comedy of errors, a coming-of-age story, and a touching tribute to a strange piece of paradise.
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