Greetings!

I'm thrilled to read all your responses to the book and be able to be part of this discussion. Thank you all so much.

I was especially moved by one thread of the discussion. Rachel pointed out (and then several of you responded to it) that she felt a little uncomfortable when we were:

...talking about what he might have thought, or how he might have felt, presumably because the authors were unable to communicate with Wilson in a way that they could access such information, and because other people they spoke to that had contact with Wilson were also unable to have such comprehensive conversations with Wilson. While it is admirable and appreciated that the authors were able to imagine, and decided to document, how Wilson probably felt, it is also disheartening that Wilson was limited in the ways he could express himself to others....I wish he was able to tell the authors of his biography exactly how he felt about his life and what he was thinking and feeling when he was granted his "freedom"...

This was the most difficult part of writing Unspeakable. And unfortunately, we did not even have the opportunity to meet Mr. Wilson in person. When we tried to schedule an opportunity to meet him, we were told he was quite ill. He died a few weeks later. (Is that not clear in the text? We'll have to fix that in the second edition.) All the information we attained was from his friends, attendants, activists on his behalf, and family members. He did have one close signing friend at the end of his life, but even he felt he was always guessing about what Wilson actually felt. Seventy years of incarceration--away from language he understood well--definitely had a severe impact on his ability to communicate with others. And before other signers met him, Wilson had a stroke that compromised his language abilities still further.

But as so many of you said, what happened to Mr. Wilson was a story too important to ignore, despite this tragic difficulty. Had we not explicitly stated that we were trying to imagine how he might have seen it all, Susan and I would have felt that we had merely contributed to the exploitation he experienced. We wanted to make sure we made it extremely clear that we did not know what Wilson thought and that we were merely guessing. Otherwise, we might have been perceived as claiming we knew what Wilson's "voice" really was. And that would simply be taking his voice away once again. Know what I mean?

For those of you interested in hearing more from the authors, you can read an interview with us that the publishers conducted.

A short book about a somewhat similar story was released a few years ago and some of you might like checking it out: God Knows His Name: The True Story of John Doe No. 24.

Enjoy your class and thanks for letting me participate. Tomorrow morning I am off for a book signing and a conference in North Carolina where Susan and I will share our research on Junius Wilson. I look forward to meeting you all!