Deaf Slam Time

Ok. This is my final slam poetry post. At least, for now.

All of my other slams were videos with speaking and since they weren't captioned they were horridly inaccessible. For today's slam I'm going in the opposite direction and posting a very famous ASL poem by Clayton Valli called "Dandelion":

Basically the poem describes someone removing dandelions, mowing them over, etc but every time they do the seeds scatter and create more dandelions. The dandelion remover in the poem represents the hearing community and dandelions are the Deaf and Deaf culture. Every time the hearing try to mow over them, the Deaf not only come back but spread. The poem echoes attempts to get rid of ASL in deaf residential schools.

This poem reminds me of a Mexican proverb I really love that's used a lot by the Zapatistas: "Quisieron enterrarnos, peru no sabian que somos semillas." In English it translates to "They tried to bury us, but they didn't know that we were seeds."

Black and white photo of a protest sign that says
"Quisieron enterrarnos, peru no sabian sue somos semilla."