Review: Belonging: An Autoethnography of a Life in Sign Language, by O’Connell, Noel

A cursory examination of Noel O’Connell’s book Belonging might lead a reader to think, “Oh, it’s another book about being culturally Deaf,” but this notion quickly fades as the reader pays closer attention to O’Connell’s rich and accessible storytelling. In this autoethnography, O’Connell’s experiences growing up in a Deaf residential school in Ireland support themes evident in previous memoirs, rhetoric, and studies about Deafhood and pulls them together in a single text that is both touching and critical. O’Connell simultaneously celebrates his identity juxtaposed by abuse and subjugation he experienced in a stringent church-based educational system for Deaf students in Ireland. He bares his vulnerable Self, permitting readers a glimpse of how he has incorporated trauma into his self-conception. Drawing largely on the germinal works of Erving Goffman¹ and Michel Foucault,² as well as his own scholarship,...