Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson
Discussion with author, Dr. Susan Burch
February 3, 2011
Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent 76 years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including 6 in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. Yet, he was deaf and black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is a fascinating biography that explores the complicated intersections of race and disability as well as of community and language, at a particular time in American history.
Susan Burch, Ph.D., is the author of Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900 to World War II (Awarded Outstanding Academic Title, 2003, Choice); the coeditor of Double Visions: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Women and Deafness and of Deaf and Disability Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches. She is the coauthor of Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson. Burch served as editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of American Disability History (recipient of Booklist/RBB Editors' Choice Reference Sources, 2010). She is an associate professor of American studies and director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Middlebury College.
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