Silence is my Habitat: ecobiographical essays

by Jessica White

Jessica White has been deaf since she was four years old. Through ecobiography, which dwells on a person’s interaction with their ecosystem and how this shapes their sense of self, she considers how deafness encouraged and moulded her relationship to the natural world. Unable to hear easily, she became observant, exploring her environments through the tactile and olfactory.

In these poetic essays, she describes her responses to bodies of water, the university, the archive, the bush, and the quietened realm of the pandemic. She writes of burnt trees amidst the devastating loss of her mother. She finds a flock of deaf women writers who help her fly.

White reveals that deafness, although it can bring fatigue and isolation, is also a portal to a rich, contemplative, and creative life.

Genres: Nonfiction

176 pages, Paperback

Published October 3, 2025

About the author

Jessica White was raised in the country in northwestern NSW and, at age 4, lost most of her hearing from a bout of meningitis. Being a determined little girl, she refused to be daunted by her disability, but instead made her way from a tiny school of 100 pupils to publishing her first novel at age 29, before graduating with a PhD from the University of London.

Jessica’s first novel, A Curious Intimacy, was published by Penguin in 2007, and won a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award. Her second novel, Entitlement, was released by Penguin in September 2012.

Jessica currently works part-time as a research assistant in Brisbane, while writing her third novel and a book of creative non-fiction.

She can be found at www.jessicawhite.com.au

Reviews

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jessica White’s literary essay, auto-fiction, non-fiction exploration of sound, loss, history, the natural world, memory, climate change and disability is a well-researched, moving account of her life at this time – after the death of her mother; navigating the world as a non-hearing person; maintaining an intimate relationship; losing herself in the world of academia; and her many interactions with plants and animals and the environment – as she relates the significant incidents of her life over recent years and combines this with childhood memories and ideas about First Nations people and the harsh beauty and resilience of this country we call Australia. SILENCE IS MY HABITAT (UpSwell Publishing 2025) is billed as a collection of Ecobiographical Essays, a term I had not heard before, but which very much describes White’s content.

The book consists of loosely connected essays, each structured in small vignettes. While each has a representative title: Hostile Architecture; We Were All Deaf in the Pandemic; The Breath Goes Now; On the Wing; or Balancing, for example, even the information covered in each particular essay continues to return to her persistent themes: navigating the world as a deaf woman; making choices about family and relationships; her inextricable connection to the natural world; her work as a teacher, academic and writer.

She uses the original Indigenous names for place and is mindful and respectful of the way she moves through this country (and others) and the footprint she leaves behind. She grew up on a farm but knows much about traditional Indigenous agriculture. She lost her hearing at the age of four after a bout of meningitis – a devastating blow that obviously has presented her with great challenges but has also – to her mind – given her opportunities and heightened other senses to compensate. Her lifelong study of the nineteenth-century botanist Georgiana Molloy, and her compelling hybrid memoir HEARING MAUD, show her dedication and respect for historical figures who have paved the way before her, and her frequent mentions of the inspiration and accomplishments of contemporary (often deaf) writers demonstrate the unyielding and meticulous strands of her many research webs, and her admiration for the work of others. White is a generous writer, a contemplative and gentle writer, an author who thinks deeply and questions constantly.

Punctuating her research and factual findings are intermittent musings on her own life, loves, ambitions, disappointments, successes, misunderstandings, regrets and joys. A rich, luscious, evocative and enveloping collection, SILENCE IS MY HABITAT is a delightful and thought-provoking read.

[Dani Netherclift · Rating 5 out of 5]

These beautiful, intelligent essays are the perfect antidote to the vicious news cycle we suffer through daily. To step away into White's carefully considered and keenly observed 'habitat' is to understand the world through a quieter lens, and to notice details we normally might not. As a reader, I came away richer for the experience. As a woman who has recently lost her own mother, and who is the mother of a disabled child, I felt deeply drawn in a kind of shared mother-grief, and illuminated as regards my son. Having said that, you don't need these interstices of shared experience to feel the resonances of this book, as it is deeply drawn in nature writing, science, history, long distance relationships and other cultural and social touchstones. In the end, to return to my first sentence, it is the writing and the quiet reflection that will make you wish to find your own solace and pleasure in these pages.