Love for a Deaf Rebel Schizophrenia on Bowen Island
By Derrick King
Pearl’s stillborn deaf association and her unmarketable chocolates were naïve, but her initiative impressed me. I wondered how successful Pearl would have been and how she could still be if she had a mentor. Most people overrate their importance in other people’s lives, and I was no exception. It took Pearl and me two years to eat the chocolates. Our next date was at the Ridge Theater, where we saw a Spanish movie with subtitles.
As we sat in the theatre, I was surprised to see Eugénie walk past the footlights, smile at me, and sit at the other end of the theatre. She and I had seen more foreign films than Hollywood films and plenty of both. The Ridge had been our favourite haunt. While we were together, Eugénie and I had worked our way through every non-bondage position in The Joy of Sex. Now, ten years later, I was working my way through every sign in The Joy of Signing! After the movie, Pearl came to my place and pointed to the map on my wall.
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Derrick King
Derrick King published the biographical memoir Love for a Deaf Rebel: Schizophrenia on Bowen Island (Provenance Press, 2021) about his tumultuous romance with Pearl, a vibrant and profoundly deaf maverick who, unknown to him, had paranoid schizophrenia.
Biography.
King learned sign language for her, and the couple moved to Bowen Island in 1985. There, they married and built their dream home and hobby farm. The bond that grew between strangers living in two worlds brings revelations about prejudice, acceptance, handicaps, and equality. They encountered one obstacle after another as Pearl’s perception of reality—and, crucially, their perception of each other—began to change. The difficulty of dealing with a loved one’s mental illness masked by disability changed Derrick King’s life.
He left Bowen Island in 1988 because of the events described in this book and never returned to Canada to live. After twenty years of residing in the Netherlands, Japan, Australia, and India, he made his home in Singapore. Derrick King was born in 1954, a fifth-generation Newfoundlander. He moved to Vancouver in 1957 and graduated from the University of British Columbia (BASc, 1977) and Simon Fraser University (MBA, 1988).
Derrick King
