Jessica White’s literary essay, auto-fiction, non-fiction exploration of sound, loss, history, the natural world, memory, climate change and disability is a well-researched, moving account of her life at this time – after the death of her mother; navigating the world as a non-hearing person; maintaining an intimate relationship; losing herself in the world of academia; and her many interactions with plants and animals and the environment – as she relates the significant incidents of her life over recent years and combines this with childhood memories and ideas about First Nations people and the harsh beauty and resilience of this country we call Australia. SILENCE IS MY HABITAT (UpSwell Publishing 2025) is billed as a collection of Ecobiographical Essays, a term I had not heard before, but which very much describes White’s content.
The book consists of loosely connected essays, each structured in small vignettes. While each has a representative title: Hostile Architecture; We Were All Deaf in the Pandemic; The Breath Goes Now; On the Wing; or Balancing, for example, even the information covered in each particular essay continues to return to her persistent themes: navigating the world as a deaf woman; making choices about family and relationships; her inextricable connection to the natural world; her work as a teacher, academic and writer.
She uses the original Indigenous names for place and is mindful and respectful of the way she moves through this country (and others) and the footprint she leaves behind. She grew up on a farm but knows much about traditional Indigenous agriculture. She lost her hearing at the age of four after a bout of meningitis – a devastating blow that obviously has presented her with great challenges but has also – to her mind – given her opportunities and heightened other senses to compensate. Her lifelong study of the nineteenth-century botanist Georgiana Molloy, and her compelling hybrid memoir HEARING MAUD, show her dedication and respect for historical figures who have paved the way before her, and her frequent mentions of the inspiration and accomplishments of contemporary (often deaf) writers demonstrate the unyielding and meticulous strands of her many research webs, and her admiration for the work of others. White is a generous writer, a contemplative and gentle writer, an author who thinks deeply and questions constantly.
Punctuating her research and factual findings are intermittent musings on her own life, loves, ambitions, disappointments, successes, misunderstandings, regrets and joys. A rich, luscious, evocative and enveloping collection, SILENCE IS MY HABITAT is a delightful and thought-provoking read.