Vinton Cerf, one of the Internet's founders, helped develop e-mail to communicate with his deaf wife Sigrid.
I strongly recommend these and similar books for honest people even if not involved with Deaf people because they give valuable insight on the DEAF WORLD and its history and culture, showing similarities between it and many hearing cultures considered at the bottom of world society. I also recommend a biography of Louis Braille.
Dawn Sign Press
Harlan Lane, Robt Hoffmeister, Ben Bahan
Deaf historian Harlan Lane is hearing and the other two authors are Deaf. Lane opens the book with his name and school, in proper DEAF WORLD etiquette.
Published in 1996 Journey can be considered transitional. It starts at the edge of the DEAF WORLD and gradually moves to the center of it. Readers travel from birth or later deafening of Deaf children deeper and deeper to the light at the end of the tunnel. It continues through a basic Deaf history, followed by education of Deaf children, moving towards the DEAF WORLD's 1996-projected future. Deaf advocacy is shown as coming to the foreground, problems are being recounted and solutions beginning to be noticed wait in the wings. Deaf and Sign are capitalized when referring to the DEAF WORLD (caps or small caps) Journey gets scarier and scarier. One shivers reading it because it's nonfiction and could happen to anyone, even those of age and no longer a minor. In centuries past, the "Deaf and dumb" were singled out as retarded and unmarriageable to give up their freedom for lifelong warehousing away from public view.
Deaf parents of Deaf children are overjoyed at having children like themselves regardless of future discrimination and hardship the child would face. This child learns to Sign from birth and with his parents enters the DEAF WORLD. These are the born storytellers who attract audiences, and who best teach other children to Sign. Hearing children born to Deaf parents also learn to Sign and communicate with their parents. These children are called codas - children of Deaf adults. Deaf children born to hearing parents have a harder time of it as hearing parents try to adjust the children to be like them. Unlike Deaf parents, hearing parents not questioning authority are susceptible to misleading advice of "professionals" wanting to exploit them and unable or unwilling to earn a living by honest, sincere means. These parents are told not to allow their children access to Deaf peers or to learn to Sign. Even worse, they're told to provide their children with expensive cochlear transplants which often don't work and only make things worse. Parents often took such bogus advice as binding and didn't question it. Deaf children whose parents didn't Sign begged to stay at school with people who Sign.
Hearing parents worried that residential Deaf schools have a more limited curriculum than mainstream public schools mainstream their Deaf children, often with an interpreter. The child is isolated from other Deaf people. State laws mandate a full curriculum in all schools, including those for the deaf. Instead of boring language drills, residential Deaf school students now learn to live with deafness instead of trying to conquer it. Friendships made in the schools are lifelong. Instead of being kicked out after graduation and sent their separate ways, leaving school days behind, Deaf school students' travel intineraries include visits to their own school and to others along the route. They're not seen as pedophiles to be kept out but as welcome, involved visitors and mentors.
Deaf Education began formally in France during the 1700s when Abbe Eppe encountering two Deaf sisters wondered why they didn't respond to his greeting. French Sign Language (FSL) based in informal French Signing served as a forerunner influencing American Sign Language (ASL) Father Laurent Clerc spent three years in the United States, helping the Gallaudet brothers establish a residential school specializing in Deaf education. Soon other Deaf schools and colleges were established around the country, starting in the Northeast. In the 1700s Deaf families fleeing persecution in Europe settled on Martha's Vineyard, a small island off Cape Cod, Massachussetts. They lived and Signed comfortably with hearing people until with modern transportation and communication most of them moved to the mainland. Island residents still Sign. Jane Kageleiry wrote an article on this subject for the March 1999 issue of Yankee Magazine.
Vocational training, once limited to trades like carpentry and printing, now covers other careers as well. Early Deaf schools were mostly oral and punished students caught Signing. Students continued to Sign when teachers weren't looking, teaching other students to Sign, keeping their unique language alive despite attempts by ill-natured people to extinguish it. Children not taught to Sign at home enter school without a primary language and face lifelong disadvantage. False sign languages such as SEE, Signed English and Singlish are sometimes taught and passed off as Sign Language.
Journey also covers Deaf education and society in other countries, from Sweden, whose system is more advanced than many countries, to England and France whose system is so-so, to African third-world countries whose system is bad or worse with no schools or teachers for the Deaf. Often there's only one interpreter in the entire country and no real sign language is used beyond what individual Deaf people learn at home if at all. Full page photos include a page of photos of residential Deaf schools in the United States.
Deaf President Now - the Gallaudet Revolution March 6 - 13 1988 a national student strike against another hearing President of Gallaudet led to the appointment of I. Jordan King as Gallaudet's first Deaf president, appointing other Deaf school presidents, and hiring Deaf teachers and school staff and hiring Deaf people elsewhere. Deaf athletes gave football the huddle and baseball its signals for teams to Sign and communicate with each other. Many Deaf athletes starred on hearing teams. Yet only rarely are they covered in hearing media. Published Deaf arts and literature described in Journey mostly involve Deaf themes.
Deaf etiquette
Deaf news is passed along. "They're closing Pennsylvania's residential school," "A was hired as a Deaf counselor," "B got married and moved," for example. To withhold such news items is considered rude. Deaf people can't hear radios. Most Deaf news isn't in the media. Deaf people take full advantage of the Internet and email for wider networking. Lengthy greetings and goodbyes are common, as there's much to talk about. Looking straight at people, considered rude in hearing society, is proper etiquette among Deaf people watching each other Sign. Talking to others in front of Deaf people without Signing (if you know ASL) is also rude. Sports is a favorite Deaf activity and discussion topic. Deaf school teams are closely followed. Deaf players often star on mainstream professional teams. Another favorite activity and competition is storytelling, using both secular and classic Deaf themes.
For all the book's scariness there's still help for the Deaf. That help is the DEAF WORLD and its language and culture. ASL classes in hearing schools, typically taught by Deaf teachers, rapidly fill to overflowing. The sooner people learn to Sign the better. With mean people are removed from decision-making positions the world moves forward instead of backward.
Deaf Life Press
Matthew S Moore, Linda Levitan 1996
This book is shorter and contains line drawings by Deaf artists. It's a FAQ about deafness and Deaf culture drawn from published questions hearing people ask Deaf Life Magazine. HPO starts out with Deaf history followed by questions about ASL and DEAF WORLD etiquette. In one cartoon a lady asks a Deaf man "Can you read my lips?" to which he answers "Can you read my hands?" and walks away laughing, leaving her baffled. The famous 12 Faces question "what do you call deaf people?" originally published in Deaf Life shows a really unhappy Deaf woman. You want to please her and make her happy. Keep reading. Voila! the correct word is "Deaf" and she brightens at last.
HPO grows angry toward its end, with questions about DEAF WORLD acceptance of those different from the norm. The word "bullshit" is used more and more often to describe snobbishness and politics towards those seeking careers beyond the usual ones of carpentry, printing and Deaf counseling and advocacy, and rejection of later-deafened adults less ASL fluent. HPO is good companion reading to Journey into the DEAF WORLD.
Dawn Sign Press
Roy K and sons Tom K and Sam K Holcomb
This book is the third version of a book of DEAF WORLD cultural anecdotes. It starts out with a few classic Deaf wordplays I couldn't find online, including the giant and the Deaf tree. These are passed on from generation to generation and used to teach ASL and to illustrate it for outsiders.
Sign Media, Inc
Gil Eastman
1996 collection of OUT, IN, Just a thought, Do you ever wonder why, Just a reminder, Sad but true, and many other truisms including bumper stickers such as "Flash your lights if you're Deaf!" It makes readers think about what Deaf people face coping with an unsympathetic hearing world. Toward the end they start getting too technical and complicated for laypeople to understand, but those before are a good illustration of Deaf life. Gil Eastman taught theater arts at Gallaudet, also serving as an actor, stage manager, producer and playwright. HE SAID WIPE HE SAID WIPE HE SAID WIPE - I seen in the Deaf Mosaic video, Gilbert Eastman said TDD instead of TTY. Or was it his interpreter?
Gallaudet University Press, 2000
Dennis S Buck
The word Peddler comes from Middle English pedl, or basket, in which early peddlers carried their merchandise. Traveling salesmen have been around for ages. Peddler organizers, cows, prey on deaf new arrivals with no place else to go to earn a living in a dominant hearing society. With empty promises of future goals such as new cars and fine homes recruits are kept working around the clock for little or no pay and barely enough food. Trapped for life or until their usefulness ends, they're looked down on by people they depend on for the few small pennies they earn. For all its hazards and hassles, peddling does have advantages for those averse to lifelong slaving for chump change and nothing to show in old age that isn't discovered and latched on to.
Born in Ohio to hearing parents, with three older hearing siblings, only Dennis and his younger brother Mark were born deaf. At ten he and Mark were placed in St Rita's school for the Deaf in Cincinnatti where they learned to Sign. Dennis enjoyed farm work, school sports and reading. A hard worker, his one weakness was motorcycles. After graduating from Gallaudet in engineering he and his friend Rafael took off on a bike trip to New York to visit Rafael's relatives. Speeding along a curved mountain highway, the bike crashed headlong into an oncoming car that couldn't stop in time to save Dennis from being paralyzed from the chest down and Rafael from deep coma from which he later recovered after returning home to his parents in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Dennis eventually rebuilds upper body strength and gets used to his wheel chair.
Dennis returns to Gallaudet. His new roomate Don unpacks brochures. Dennis is hooked. Turning down good job offers in his field of study, Dennis takes to the road as a peddler. Don breaks it off when he finds a girlfriend, leaving Dennis on his own driving from town to town when local markets become saturated or inaccdessible, living in his van to save on hotel bills. Dennis hustles free showers by watching for guests leaving their rooms and checking out and sneaking in before the maid arrives to clean the room. Airports with ever-changing customer bases are the most lucrative. His first attempt at stability failed when his job at Wright Patterson AFB turned out to be all prejudice and no pay raises or advancement. Dennis then spent years peddling Chicago's O'Hare Field and nearby airports. After the 1993 hit on New York's World Trade Center, airport security became tighter and Dennis had to move on.
Returning to engineering grad school in Florida he met and married his interpreter Roseanne Trapani. Although Dennis does lecture a little on the morals of accepting government benefits instead of working, at least he doesn't go into whole chapters detailing his post-peddling redemption and renewal. He peddles on weekends to pay school and living expenses while writing this book.
For Hearing Dogs Only
Kerena Marchant
British-born Kerena Matchant became deaf at an early age. During her early years her world was kept small and mobile to prevent her father from kidnapping her and taking her to Iran, where she'd never be seen again. As with most children of hearing parents, Kerena's deafness wasn't immediately discovered. Attending normal hearing schools to learn to cope in a hearing world, Kerena received much support from classmates and most teachers. Kerena's best grades in school were in religion classes, due to her intense interest in it. She learned to Sign as an adult (BSL, two-handed manual alphabet and all) She prefers hearing people who know how to Sign to ask her permission before using sign language in conversation with her.
Skipper entered Kerena's life after she finished college, worked as a BBC captioner, and moved out on her own. Skipper, with his own staff badge, was the office darling. Unlike guide dogs ofr the blind, hearing dogs for the deaf weren't accepted in many places as assistance animals are today. The studio did feature and news stories about Skipper and his training as a hearing dog. I thought chocolates were toxic to dogs. Why didn't Skipper grow fat from them?
Kerena's job left her no time for fundraising and touring for Deaf causes. Yet after her promotion to the production department as a researcher for her favorite programs she could offer publicity, as well as preventing other Deaf people from discrimination in incidents she encountered, and by writing this highly readable book for American as well as British readers. One acquires some knowledge about hearing dogs.
Missed the boat
Leah Hager Cohen, Vintage Books (Random House) 1995
Train Go Sorry is ASL for missed connections or missing the boat.
The author, hearing, was born and raised at Lexington School for the Deaf in New York City, her grandfather's alma mater. Her mother taught nursery school and her father directed child care. Her mother is hardly mentioned but her father, Oscar Cohen, a CODA (child of deaf adults) and still believing in oralism rqather than sign, became superintendent when the author was 12. Lexington was established in 1864 by a German couple with a deaf child as strictly oral, based on German methods, to teach deaf children to speak.
Deaf education began seriously in Spain during the 1500s because deaf children weren't allowed to inherit. Inbreeding among noble families over several centuries led to many deaf children. Keeping family fortunes intact made noble families desperate for their deaf children to learn speech. Deaf children in France learned FSL, French Sign Language, from Abbe L'Eppe and then Abbe Sicard, whose purposes were more religious than financial. Dr Cogswell, refusing to institutionalize his deaf daughter Alice, sought to educate her at home. The town council sent his neighbor, Reverend Samuel Gallaudet, to Europe to study deaf education methods. In 1817 he brought home Sicard's student Laurent Clerc to teach FSL to deaf students at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, still open today. Americans adapted it to ASL, American Sign Language, trasnsforming French to English. President Lincoln in 1864 chartered the world's first college for the Deaf, which became Gallaudet University. Its first president was Gallaudet's son Edward Miner Gallaudet.
ASL's golden age ended when the World Deaf Conference in Milan in 1880, entirely without Deaf input, outlawed sign languages and made deaf schools entirely oral. Signing became a forbidden, punishable offense as students were expected to speak like hearing people do, compensating for their deafness by lip reading. While deaf children spent their school hours learning speech, good, normal, hearing children such as the author spent hers learning content. In 1988 Gallaudet University needed a new president. When a hearing president was selected, the heat was on. Gallaudet students protested for a deaf president and board members. The DPN (Deaf President Now) movement drew worldwide media attention and sympathy. I King Jordan became Gallaudet's president. Here the Deaf Wave was born when students waved their hands visually instead of clapping them as hearing people do. The following year, 1989, Gallaudet hosted the first Deaf Way world conference. The second Deaf Way conference was held in 2002, after this book was published.
Movements exist to mainstream Deaf students, replacing residential schools, obliterating Deaf culture. When hearing Special Education superintendents said it's not the schools' responsibility to preserve Deaf culture, Jordan replied that culture is absorbed, not learned, and that the center of the Deaf world is its schools. When in 1990 the ADA became law, mainstream schools were required to provide interpreters for deaf students in now-Federally mandated accommodation for disabled people. Deaf culture and ASL became popular among the hearing, satisfying academic requirements. ASL again is used in deaf schools, transmitted from generation to generation of schoolmates. Students not fluent in ASL enter special classes to acquire it. Hearing parents of deaf children are now encouraged to learn ASL along with their children. Schools maintain outreach offices to teach it from infancy. Hearing people are also invited to learn ASL.
Students traveling to Washington DC and Gallaudet chose bus seats according to ASL fluency. Those most fluent sat in back where they could converse with each other. This doesn't mean they dislike those less fluent. A struggling beginner struggles with basic hand shapes and signs but with her good attitude is adopted warmly and helped to learn ASL. One more fluent but with a condescending manner is disliked.
James Taylor's desire to attend classes was hampered by lack of bus fare, among other reasons. Living in Lexington's dorms Monday through Friday Taylor became an honor student, participating in many other activities. His younger brother Joseph instead went to Riker's Island. After trying twice to visit Joseph only to find he's in court that day, the third try was successful. James after hearing Joseph's talk decides it's Joseph who missed the boat, not him. James also noticed Riker's inmates were all black or Chicano. James drifted away from his friend Paul Escobar and others, wanting instead to go to college and improve his life while his homies only wanted to drift and get into more trouble. Sent uptown for a hearing test for new hearing aids, James was instead evaluated for a cochlear implant without his knowledge or consent. Fortunately for James, counselors at Lexington laughed at and disregarded the report. Cochlear implants, definitely not the medical breakthrough they're touted as, destroy permanently any residual hearing the person may have and undermining his Deaf World membership while doing no good. More "experts" trying to sell something and make money.
Sofia and Irina Normatov, from Samarkand, Russia, where Judaism is forbidden by law, were sent 8 hours away to a residential school for the deaf in Leningrad, coming home only for summer vacations. Family photos are marked by the two girls' absence while their two older sisters, both hearing, were included. Their mother, not wanting to bear more deaf children, gave the girls the implied message that deaf children are inferior to hearing ones. Sofia, to whom her parents left the responsibility for looking after Irina, leaves for Gallaudet despite her mother's opposition to her leaving home. The family was happy to live at last where they could be Jews openly and freely.
Train is part autobiography, part case study, part treatise on deaf education. Its themes are about attitudes toward the deaf and education of deaf children. It presents Deaf issues form the viewpoint of both Deaf and hearing communities. Deaf culture, with its unique language and culture, is the world's only culture that is cross-spectrum rather than ethnic. Chapterized like a novel, Train gives a brief background of Deaf history and culture as it follows the lives and careers of students, family members and several others inside and outside Lexington's world.
The author, after private ASL tutoring, works for several years as an interpreter but sees interpreters as more hearing people (the dominant culture) exploiting deaf people for money. She quits and attends college, becoming a writer and journalist.
This book is great for seeing the Deaf World through the eyes of a hearing person who lived there since birth. It's also suggested for Sign Language class book reviews. It readably takes outsiders on a Deaf World tour, showing how its language and culture work. The book also reminds me of other oppressed cultures, exploited without their consent and sometimes without their knowledge. I see its themes as universal, its characters' situations as typical. Most available books about deafness were written in the 1980s and the 1990s, a transitional period for Deaf progress. They may contain some validity still, but conditions today are somewhat different. There's still "experts" around with their hands out, using and misleading weak people to preserve their careers, costing honest people money and robbing them of their very freedom sometimes. Hearing parents of deaf children are now encouraged to learn ASL, instead of making their children like tham at all costs. Everybody learns about DPN and other Deaf facts. Deaf people have a brighter future and more career choices than ever before, with TTYs, CC (closed Captioning of TV and movies) and other technical advances to assist them without impacting their language or culture. ASL is more popular even among the hearing. Deaf people mostly no longer read below grade level, as students at Lexington struggled with English grammar and labored for hours with a simple reading test required for acceptance even at Deaf colleges.
Deaf people cheerfully fight to preserve their culture in this multicentury pendulum between good times and oppression. The pendulum swings nowadays more and more in favor of the Deaf as they learn to speak up and defend their culture, sharing it with the hearing. ASL, a repository of Deaf culture and history, is popular among hearing and satisfies foreign language requirements for graduation. Modern technology, including the Internet as well as TTY, helps change life even for disabled people by making communication easier. A 1985 book, written before the 1990 ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) shows a Deaf child whose school refuses to hire an interpreter for her. With the ADA in effect schools are required to provide needed assistance in the least restrictive environment, with lawyers mandated to uphold these purposes and defend clients' rights to refuse invasive, unwanted treatment such as cochlear implants.
Deaf culture should be preserved along with its heritage. Residential Deaf schools play an important role which should not be underestimated, as I J King said. Learning English and speech as academic subjects is useful for all, including the Deaf. Deaf people still have work ahead of them as the pendulum swings too far the other way and eliminates residential schools, isolating Deaf children from peers and adult role models, often depriving them of their culture and language as well. Deaf kids, like other kids, have little or no say in their lives.
I read your review and want you to know I think your writing style is very good. Also, it's excellent that you've written this much already. You're off to a fine start.
My biggest suggestion has to do with fitting the review to the requested
format. By that I mean, the last part of the review should deal with your
interpretation of the book's main ideas or themes. Instead of summarizing the
information about the various students in that part of the review, can you
explain more about the book's message about attitudes toward the deaf and deaf
culture? Also, you may want to decide on your priority for the summary of the book in your paper's first two pages. What's most important: the history, or the stories of the students? I'd suggest you consider condensing the history and moving the descriptions of students to the first part of the paper.
Ms. Kendall
I skimmed through it and enjoyed what I read. Now my only concern is the
balance. The guidelines call for two pages of plot summary, then two-three pages
of interpretation, with the interpretation starting on page three, focusing on
the theme. The interpretation section is very short in this version. To get a good grade, follow the guidelines.
Ms. Kendall
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