Haben Girma (she/her) is a disability rights advocate, the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School and she is an Unapologetically Black Unicorn. Haben discusses her book, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law, as well as the importance of accessibility, advocacy, and recognizing the many dimensions of disability identity. They discuss the importance of inclusive communication, multisensory experiences and learning from people with different disabilities and backgrounds. Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law, by Haben Girma: https://habengirma.com/book/ More about Haben Girma: https://habengirma.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/habengirma/ The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is now: 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Contact the show: UBU@UnapologeticallyBlackUnicorns.info Transcripts are available on Apple Podcasts. Descriptive Transcript: [Music intro the theme music is piano, electric guitar with strong brass and horn melody with a funk beat and becomes softer when Keris starts her intro] KERIS: Welcome, and welcome back to Unapologetically Black Unicorns. I am so excited that today I have a guest who is… and people know I make up words. So these are the words that I'm making up for this guest. She is splendiferous. Magnificent, that is not a made-up word. Wonder Fluidus. [keris laughing] Yeah, she's amazing! Okay, that's not… that's not a made-up word either, but she's amazing, and I've had the pleasure of meeting her a couple of times. I've read her book, and we'll talk maybe a little bit about her book. But before we get into all of that, Um, many people know I'm Keris, I'm your host of UBU, but many people might not know what the heck I look like unless they happen to already know me, but I'm African American and Indigenous, I have long black hair that also has a natural gray undercut. Yeah, okay, I'm naturally gray at this point, what can I say? I'm wearing glasses that have a rainbow rim to them. Have a little bit of lipstick on, and I have on my Disability is Not a Bad Word shirt on today. And my background is blurred out because we are on Zoom. Also, people know, relative to this podcast, I don't do bios. I ask my guests to introduce themselves. So, Haben, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Would you like to introduce yourself? [SILENCE- DELAY] HABEN: Hello, everyone! My name is Haben Girma. It's delightful to be here and connecting with everyone over this podcast. And audio is a fascinating way for me to connect with people. Because I don't listen to podcasts personally. Since I'm deafblind, And during this conversation, what we're doing is we're using technology, specifically a braille computer and keyboard. You will notice a delay! Between the questions and the answers. Part of accessibility is patience. Making time for all kinds of places. My voice is coming from the Bay Area in California. I am a woman in my 30s. With Eritrean and Ethiopian ancestry. And…I have lived in different places, but I keep coming back to the Bay Area, because I love…[speaking with enthusiasm] the wealth of food and cultures and beautiful parks we have over here in the community that I've built up over here. So, what…is important to me is building community. And I do that through…Education. Creating legal advocacy and writing. I published a book that talks about how…Ableism, racism, and sexism, show up in different aspects of our world. And the things we could do to remove them from our community. KERIS: Thanks for that introduction, Haben. And speaking of your book, um, I think before I met you the first time in San Francisco, at a library event you were doing with our friend Mychal Threats, I read your book, and I read it via audiobook, And to be clear, audiobook is a way of reading a book. And I laughed. I cried, I clutched my pearls, I have no pearls, but if I had them, I would have clutched them. I, um… Oh, I don't know, I had… I went through all the emotions in that book, and I just love that book. And I saw and heard your sense of humor. So when I got to meet you, um, in order to communicate with you, I had to type on a, um, keyboard that communicated with your Braille device. And I had to tell you, I'm a horrible typist, that I actually type backwards because I have a form of, I guess, like, a spatial dyslexia. So, um, but I remember we had a lot of fun, um, having conversation And I also remember later, when I saw you at the Disability Rights California Gala, because I had read your book, I know, uh, that you love to dance. And there was music playing, and I asked you, hey, would you like to dance? And we got up and, um, you wore me out. We weren't dancing that long, but again, you wore me out. You are the dancing queen. So, tell me a little bit about your book, um, Haben, because the name of the book is what? Haben! [KERIS LAUGHING] Go figure. But the name of the book is Haben, um, the Deaf Blind Woman Who Graduated from Harvard, um, Law School. So, can you tell us a little bit about the book? [SILENCE- DELAY] HABEN: I'd love to, but first, I would love to comment on all you've shared. That event where we met! with Mychal Threads. Fabulous! Mychal is such a powerful advocate for literacy, for community, I hope more people read Michael's new children's book. And follow him on social media. That's Michael Threats, the library ambassador. And you were also mentioning You were typing to me. And you jokingly commented that your typing…is… is not great [HABEN SAYS WITH A SMILE IN A VOICE]. And I want to reassure you…And everyone that my goal is connection. Not perfection. I don't notice most of the typos. Because I'm focused on connecting with someone. I don't care about the typos. I can understand it 99% of the time. So, I want to reassure you, the next time we meet up in person, Don't worry about spelling. I… I have lots of friends with dyslexia and different kinds of learning disabilities, Or even physical disabilities that make typing difficult. And we adapt, we find ways If someone can't type, we can have someone else type for them, like an interpreter. So, we… we adapt. We… we find….., we ways to make things work. And then you also were talking about So, while reading my book, You clutched her pearls! But then mentioned you don't actually wear pearls. So, for you, personally, When you are physically reacting to something that stuns you, or shocks you, How do you physically react? What do you do in that situation? KERIS: Um, yeah, thanks for the question. I mean, I think it depends on what it is. Um, when I…Touch my pearls, if there were, you know, my imaginary pearls. It's almost like clutching my heart for me, where something has touched me. Um, and…I think throughout the book, there were so many different points that, first of all, felt somewhat familiar for me as an African American woman. And as an African-American woman with a disability, there were, um, parts of the book that felt very familiar, And those might have been… clutch my pearl moments. Um, the biggest clutch-my-pearl moment…or that kind of, like, shock or heartfelt was, um, in the book when you were talking about being on the plane. Um, and your father, I think, was pulled off the plane, and there you are. Um, you know, Deaf and Blind, trying to figure out exactly what was going on and how frightening that was for you. I mean, that was a…That was… yeah, serious, um, moment of…just wanting to know what's gonna happen. I know you're gonna be okay, because clearly, you know, you wrote the book, you…You're here to talk about it, but just the mere fact of going through something like that,and not, um, knowing what's going on around you. Um, yeah, I just was really, uh, had a lot of emotion around that part of your story, too. [SILENCE- DELAY] HABEN: [speaking with passion] That was such an emotional experience. And for most of my life, I tried to forget it. It was so traumatic, I did not want to remember it. And I came very close to not even putting that in the book. But… We are seeing an increase in family separations…Caused by governments. The U.S. government and other governments around the world. And it is…Horrible. It is so painful. And I thought it was important to show that this impacts disabled people, too. And we really need to be mindful of what we're doing to families. When they separated me and my dad, it was…It was temporary, But I didn't know at the time it would only be temporary. I was about 6 years old. And…As you said, DeafBlind, so I couldn't see or hear everything that was happening. And that is scary, Do children without disabilities. So, it's…Yeah, it's… it's definitely a pearl-clutching moment. KERIS: Yeah, thank you so much for including it in the book, and, you know, um… having to relive the trauma, and now I feel kind of bad because I brought it up, but at the same time, I'm glad we're here to talk about it, because it does need to be… We do need people to understand the impacts of some of what these governments are doing around, um, family separation and…Um, you know, how it impacts, um, the children, And the families writ large, that it's not a…it's not imaginary, it's not something that's on a piece of paper, it's real, and it impacts real people. So, you know, thank you so much for being vulnerable, to share that, uh, and for it to, uh, remind, um, everybody who reads the book, and also folks who are listening into the podcast or reading the transcript of the podcast. Um, to, um, have that information about that part of your story in your life. [SILENCE- DELAY] HABEN: I wanted people to understand that disabled people are multi-dimensional. We have so many different aspects to our identities. And it is customary for society to try to flatten us. To just disabled people. But we're much more than that. And your podcast is also
