Inside The Butterfly Cage: A Deaf Teacher’s Story
How do you teach hearing people about audism in a way that invites conversation rather than defensiveness? One strategy is humor, and Rachel Zemach does this beautifully in her memoir The Butterfly Cage. She shows the hilarious encounters she faced navigating a school system as a Deaf teacher, and she also shows how these systems can improve. But it’s her students, overjoyed to learn ASL and build community, who are the stars of the book.
Jump to heading#Descriptive Transcript
Rachel and Haben are sitting in an outdoor cafe. Rachel’s book and Haben’s keyboard are on the table. Haben has her Braille computer on her lap, but in the video both women are signing. The video has a voiceover for accessibility.
Haben: I love your book! Would you please autograph it?
Haben (voiceover): Rachel opens her book and signs it. It's called The Butterfly Cage.
Photo: Rachel and Haben stand in the patio with Rachel holding her book. Rachel has brown hair, a light skin tone, and a purple blouse over a black shirt. She is slightly shorter than Haben. The book cover has a dark chalkboard-like background. The title appears in yellow above a framed butterfly made of colorful human hands for wings and stacked human eyes for its body. Below the image, the subtitle reads: “Joy, heartache, and corruption: Teaching while Deaf in a California public school.” (Cover art by Nancy Rourke.)
The video switches to a close-up of Rachel.
Rachel: So, I wrote the book because I taught in a hearing school for 10 years and, wow, I experienced and learned a lot. And became capital D in my own Deaf identity from what I saw in that system. What I saw related to the students, the Deaf and hard of hearing students, what they needed, what made them thrive, what their challenges and obstacles were in that system – what I went through as well. I felt I have to tell this story. I have to share what I'm seeing with the world.
The language deprivation that I saw was really extreme and unnecessary and sad. Because when my students had access to ASL, they just absolutely soared in their achievement and happiness. So, I felt I must write this book. It took 7 years and multiple edits to get it written and published, and here it is. I hope it helps people, informs them, educates them, both helps them learn and unlearn what they assumed about the Deaf and hard of hearing experience.