At the beginning of the semester, I shared a series of audio recordings of Kassandra Timm reading an excerpt from Harriet Jacobs, and as it turns out, students were really intrigued by Timm.
Although voice acting is pervasive—in commercials, audiobooks, animated films, video games, and podcasts—it's not something people usually get a chance to consider in class. In the clips we listened to, Timm followed directions I had provided for reading Jacobs's words, and then, at the end, she spoke in her
regular voice. Some of us laughed when she described it that way because, to our ears, even her everyday speaking voice sounded like something from a professional recording.
At this point, Timm has worked on more than 250 voice acting projects for me. She is the voice of our podcast
Remarkable Receptions. Still, it was a rare moment for students and me to hear a voice actor move so easily between her professional performance reading approach and her everyday speaking voice.
That particular course comprises 75 first-year collegiate Black women. It was fascinating to watch the young sisters listening to Timm reading as Jacobs and then speaking as herself. It's not every day that they encounter a voice that sounds like theirs, so to speak, presented in such a distinctive way in a classroom setting. We frequently discuss the importance of representation, but rarely do we consider the significance of
vocal representation.
We regularly listen to poets performing their poems. But exposure to a voice actor is different. A voice actor takes someone else's words and gives them new dimensions through pacing, emphasis, tone, and emotional expression. In Timm's case, students heard how a contemporary performer could bring the words of a nineteenth-century Black woman into the present. They also gained a glimpse of the creative decisions and professional skills involved in transforming written language into an engaging listening experience.
Our encounter with Timm offered something beyond a lesson about Harriet Jacobs or the art of voice acting. It encouraged us to think more carefully about the people whose voices carry literature to audiences, the possibilities of listening as a form of literary engagement, and the importance of hearing women's voices in different settings. Sometimes, one of the most powerful ways to bring literature to life is to introduce students to the remarkable people who give it a voice.
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