THE INVENTION OF MIRACLES

A writing teacher shows why Alexander Graham Bell “went down in Deaf history as the culture’s great enemy” and examines his enduring influence.

Bell’s invention of the telephone has eclipsed some of his quirkier traits, such as his habit of celebrating his triumphs by doing a Mohawk war dance that he learned from Indigenous people after his family moved from Scotland to Canada. More significantly, the telephone has overshadowed his early work as a teacher of the deaf and his steadfast view that they should learn to speak rather than sign. Booth, a hearing author who was raised in a mixed hearing/deaf family, expands the picture with a respectful yet critical biography that draws on scholarly research and her years of communicating with deaf relatives through signing. She casts Bell as a well-intentioned teacher who nonetheless did lasting harm by viewing deafness as a “defect” and by championing “oralism” (learning to speak) when research showed the greater benefits of “manualism” (signing) or “combinism” (using both methods), the approach favored by Edward Miner Gallaudet and others. Booth skillfully recaps signal events of Bell’s youth in Edinburgh, his down-to-the-wire battle with Elisha Gray to patent the telephone, his marriage to his deaf student Mabel Hubbard and subsequent American citizenship, and his friendships with Helen Keller and others. She also links his work to the continuing “institutional oppression” of the deaf. In one of a number of potentially controversial stances, the author argues that cochlear implants “can be a helpful tool for deaf people, but they are not a cure” and that some implant education programs are a modern version of the oralism favored by Bell, which she believes insufficiently considered the views of the deaf. At a time when “less than 8 percent of deaf children grow up with regular sign language access,” this ardent book is likely to reignite debates over what constitutes justice for the Deaf community.

A well-written biography reveals less-familiar aspects of the life of the famed inventor.