The Quiet Ear

A moving and expansive book about the long journey of finding a voice, and the joy and power of using it -- Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide
A powerful and important book. This expansive memoir chronicles Antrobus' vexed journey across and between the multitudes he contains: his Jamaican heritage and his British one; his blackness and his whiteness; and, again and again, the fraught but ultimately joyful experience of living between hearing and deafness. His voice is at once blunt and lyrical, angry and curious -- Andrew Leland, Pulitzer Prize-Finalist and author of The Country of the Blind
The Quiet Ear is a marvel, a story of his life as a Deaf man in a society as unjust as ours, which he investigates with clarity, honesty, endless patience and tenderness . . . The book is a confession, an arts poetica, a manifesto. The reader learns what it might mean to live between sound and its lack, what it is to discover and remake one's own culture, between Britain and Jamaica, Deafness and birdsong. Which is to say: you will find here what it is to watch and be watched by our world, what it is to be a good human in a tough time, to be filled with wonder, even in the age of a crumbling empire, what it is to be a young father, an ageing son, a human being with talent for language that is memorable and clarifying. Antrobus is a terrific writer, yes, but what is more, he is an honest one -- Ilya Kaminsky, National Book Award-Finalist and author of Deaf Republic
The Quiet Ear presents a complex portrait of deafness that goes beyond living without sound. Antrobus situates his own personal story of growing up not quite Black or deaf enough within larger contexts of D/deaf culture, race, masculinity, and colonialism. Lyrical, moving and powerful -- Alice Wong, author of Disability Intimacies: Essays on Love, Care and Desire and Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life
The Quiet Ear is expansive, generous, and massively tender. A beautiful exploration of an interior life grappling with several magnitudes of loss, and what can be found within them -- Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year
Beautifully complicates and expands our understanding of what deafness is. . . The Quiet Ear has given me new ways to think about the vibration of sound, the movement of language, and the complicated contours of shame. It is a book that changed how I will move through the world -- Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed
A profound exploration of deafness, identity, and the ways they intersect with race, history, and culture. With lyrical precision and unflinching honesty, Antrobus interrogates how society has shaped the narratives around deafness - both personal and collective - and the burdens placed on those who must explain, justify, or translate their existence for the comfort or curiosity of others. Blending memoir, cultural criticism, and poetic inquiry, The Quiet Ear examines the ways sound, silence, and perception shape not only selfhood but also the relationships we build with the world around us. Through reflections on history, art, and personal experience, Antrobus reveals the deep impact of representation - how deafness has been framed in literature and popular culture, and how those portrayals influence both those who are deaf and those who are not. With luminous prose and incisive insight, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in identity's evolving and performed nature. Part memoir of sound, part meditation on artistic expression,The Quiet Ear is destined to become a modern classic -- Roger Robinson, author of A Portable Paradise