Deaf in Her Own Way: The Role of Identity in Social Justice Leadership

The following fieldwork chronicles the personal and professional trajectory of Cindy Greenspun, a social justice leader at Yale University Library. At the age of eighteen months, Greenspun suffered an illness that resulted in the loss of her hearing and spent nearly the first half of her life fully immersed in the hearing world. Through significant self-reflection and perseverance, Greenspun evolved beyond the binary paradigm of oralism–the exclusive use of speech and lip reading–to ultimately embrace the essence of being both bilingual (speech and sign) and bicultural (hearing and non-hearing). These attributes not only enabled Greenspun to navigate between two distinctly disparate cultures, they also became effective tools for raising social awareness within her own family and professional life. While there is much work to be done in bridging the worlds between the deaf and the hearing, through her own exploration of self-identity, Greenspun has become deaf in her own way. As such, she serves as a catalyst at Yale in championing accessibility and equity initiatives for people with disabilities of all types.