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. Word format: https://bit.ly/WordVersionDescriptiveTranscriptHabenGirma 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 ...
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Jul 28 202636 min