The following spoken-word poem is a narrative retelling of the story of Mabel Hubbard Bell, wife of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell by SUNY New Paltz student and Slam Team member Karly Fesolwich.
In the piece entitled "A Letter to Alexander Graham Bell from His Deaf Wife Mabel," the character of Mrs. Bell speaks candidly and unabashedly about her feelings toward her curious relationship with her husband and touches with a firm thumb on what may have been the prevailing stereotype regarding deafness and disability in the late Nineteenth Century with a poignancy and potency that shakes the hearer of the poem into a vivid imagining of the almost cruel paradox of Mrs. Bell's role as her husband's public touter -- and the poem does all of this not withstanding the irony of an auditory poem being performed from the perspective a deaf person.
Before teacher and inventor Alexander Graham Bell married Mabel Hubbard, he described her voice as " ... naturally sweet ... (having a) beautiful quality ..." Unfortunately, she was never able to hear it herself because Mabel was deaf. And when Bell's most famous invention (the telephone) became extremely popular throughout the world, Mabel was unable to use it for the same reason.
Source material here
Roll on!
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