The Quiet Ear
An Investigation of Missing Sound: A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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By:
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Raymond Antrobus
About this listen
A groundbreaking exploration of deafness by a young award-winning poet—a memoir, a cultural history, and a call to action
“Expansive, generous, and massively tender.”—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year
“Beautifully complicates and expands our understanding of what deafness is . . . a book that changed how I will move through the world.”—Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed
One of Vulture’s Most Anticipated Books of the Summer
I live with the aid of deafness. Like poetry, it has given me an art, a history, a culture and a tradition to live through. This book charts that art in the hopes of offering a map, a mirror, a small part of a larger story.
Raymond Antrobus was first diagnosed as deaf at the age of six. He discovered he had missing sounds—bird calls, whistles, kettles, alarms. Teachers thought he was slow and disruptive, some didn’t believe he was deaf at all.
The Quiet Ear tells the story of Antrobus’s upbringing at the intersection of race and disability. Growing up in East London to an English mother and Jamaican father, educated in both mainstream and deaf schooling systems, Antrobus explores the shame of miscommunication, the joy of finding community, and shines a light on deaf education.
Throughout, Antrobus sets his story alongside those of other D/deaf cultural figures—from painters to silent film stars, poets to performers—the inspiring models of D/deaf creativity he did not have growing up. A singular, remarkable work, The Quiet Ear is a much-needed examination of deafness in the world.
©2025 Raymond Antrobus (P)2025 Random House AudioCritic reviews
“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
“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, editor of Disability Intimacy and author of Year of the Tiger