"Aseembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life"--deaf, gay and what it means

[AmosL]

Luczak, Raymond. “Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life”, RID Press, 2009.

Deaf, Gay and What It Means

Amos Lassen

I think most of us can agree that it is at times quite difficult to be gay in a heterosexual world and we see from Raymond Luczak that it is not so easy to be deaf in a world where most can hear. For many of us we would find it tremendously difficult to be both deaf and gay which Luczak it.
Luczak is a playwright and a director as well as an author and he has had to deal with being gay and deaf and the two identities he has had to learn to live with. “Assembly Required” is almost a journal of his experiences and it is an eye opener. He tells us early on that what he was exposed to as a boy growing up in Michigan were the kind of instruction, attitudes and media that taught him how to grow up as a heterosexual man who had the ability to hear. He knew that he did not fit but he persevered and tried his best to fit in.
He tells us about trying to follow music on the radio so his classmates and friends would accept him. His contact with the gay world was almost non-existent and it was not until he finished high school and enrolled at Galludet University (the only university in the world for deaf people) that he found books by gay authors. He began to find himself and became involved in Deaf Theater where his views were changed and he began to understand his identity.
Luczak learned what being different meant and understood first-hand what being different really means. His life in the theater taught him that when there were no parts that fit him, he would write his own. Then he began to meet others like himself and he knew he had found his place in the world. He has done well for himself—he has been author and editor of ten books and his writings have been published in anthologies; he has become a documentary film maker and has had fifteen of his plays performed in three countries.
Raymond Luczak writes from the heart. He had to, as a young man, be able to understand what being gay was all about by interpreting codes. His love of music influenced him as both a gay and a deaf man and he had to learn for himself how to navigate gay life while being unable to hear. He is an amazing and courageous person and we are so lucky that he has chosen to share his life with us.