Deaf Literature discussion

I have made few surprising finds lately.. novels about deaf characters that seem to be widely ignored. Here is one: The Silent War. Check it out!

Please feel free to join and share your own finds!

Another surprising find... Deafening. I personally loved the first part.. didn't care for the second.

My new friend Lance has told me about a deaf lady musician/composer in Scotland. She has wrote an autobiography.. Good Vibrations My Autobiography. Its going on my to read list. If anyone beats me to it, please post your thoughts.

Hey out there! For those of you who have not read The Tailor's Daughter A Novel yet, I highly recommmend it! It is about a deaf girl growing up in Victorian England and hoping to take over her father's business. She wears trousers to boot!

If you are willing to pay a bit, I found this on Amazon and it looks interesting: Silent Alarm On the Edge With a Deaf EMT. It's a bit pricey so I am hesitant.. If anybody finds it at a decent price, do let the rest of us know!

I'm reading Winning Sounds Like This A Season with the Women's Basketball Team at Gallaudet, the World's Only University for the Deaf. The title says it all. So far the play by play descriptions are really dull (to me anyway) but the deaf history and the look into girl's personal lives has been good. I didn't realize Ponce De Leon played such a huge role in deaf history. Check it out!

I shall be starting this this week: Sing a song of silence A deaf girl's odyssey. I found it on ebay and it seems to have been widely ignored. Should be a quick read tho. Check it out!

This just in! A contest is opening January 25th and the book's hero is a deaf teenager. See: The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin. Too bad there is only one available. :(

Tara wrote: "I'm reading Winning Sounds Like This A Season with the Women's Basketball Team at Gallaudet, the World's Only University for the Deaf. The title says it all. So far the play by pl..."

I loved that book! I read it in high school when I was taking ASL and playing varsity basketball.

Right on! Any other books you can think of that involve deaf characters?

Deaf Like Me

A friend of mine read that.. It's a dude isn't it?

You know.. I been wanting to ask this for a long time. How did all you ladies become deaf? We all have different stories and probably different parts of our ears that don't work. If you feel comfortable sharing, this is the group to do it.

I'll start. I have nerve damage and my loss was a gradual process that started when I was 5. I had my first hearing aides at eleven and now I have about 92 loss in one year, 95 in the other and I wear big, behind the ear hearing aides and I lip read.

Any one else?

I am actually hearing. I am just interested in deaf culture and deaf literature.

Any particular reason for that? Do you have someone close to you who is deaf or hearing impaired?

I took sign in high school.

Hey everybody, I got another book to mention. It really has NOTHING to do with deaf literature, but there is just a brief part that I want to mention and give the author some public credit for. The book is The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths and the part I want to mention is: The author (the profiler) got her first forray into profiling people by being a deaf interpreter. She would go to ERs and such to help deaf people communicate with the doctors or police. I just thought that was awesome and had to point it out to everybody.

This is sad.. I just found this autobiography tonight and I am going to buy it. Talk to the Hand. The author just passed away at the age of 21 this last May. She battled cancer her entire life. A tumor on her spine put her in a wheelchair and then she lost her eyesight. Before she passed away, tumors in her ears made her deaf as well. Her previous book is The Way I See It.

News Alert! Any of you ever heard of an Ashley in Motocross??? She's not only a motocross champ, but she's also deaf. Her autobiography came out this year: Kicking Up Dirt: A True Story of Determination, Deafness, and Daring

Hi, I just joined this group. This is so cool. I am not deaf or a CODA. I took ASL in college, made Deaf friends, moved to Taiwan where I made more Deaf friends and learned TSL. Then I studied Sing Language Linguistics, and now I am the interpreter at my congregation. I will have to look for some of these titles, but I have a whole list to add. I will follow Tara's example and put each title in its own post. All these books are ones I have on my shelves, but I haven't read all of them.

Looking Back: A Reader on the History of Deaf Communities and their Sign Languages

I have not read this book through, but I have used parts of it for research. It includes several Deaf biographies, histories of Deaf communities, histories of signed languages, articles about Deaf education, social and medical issues, and a couple of articles about methodology for researching Deaf History.

The parts I have read are very academic, but still really interesting. Lots of good information.

A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Community in America

I read this one about ten years ago, so i don't remember it real well, but it is a history of the American Deaf community.

Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard

This one is about Martha's Vinyard and the strong Deaf community that used to exist there. It is a very interesting book. It's really disappointing that there don't seem to be any records of this signlanguage that was once spoken by whole villages of people, Deaf and hearing alike, to the point where people sometimes had trouble remembering who was hearing and who deaf!

They Grow in Silence: Understanding Deaf Children and Adults

I haven't read this one yet, but it's been around for ages.

A Journey into the Deaf-World

I haven't read this one yet.

Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture

I haven't read this one yet. It is about the cultural lives of Deaf people.

The Sociolinguistics of Sign Languages

This is a textbook about linguistic research on signed languages and the communities that speak them. It is very technical, but quite interesting to anyone with the background to understand the jargon.

A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family

I haven't read this one, but it is autobiography.

Words for a Deaf Daughter

This is a sad book about a British father of a deaf girl struggling to understand his daughter. It is biography/autobiography.

Deaf Again

I haven't read this autobiography. From the back cover:

Join Mark Drolsbaugh in his wild journey -- the journey from hearing toddler, hard-of-hearing child, deaf adolescence to culturally Deaf adult.

Silent Dances

This is book 2 in A.C. Crispin's sci-fi series, StarBridge. There is no need to read book one to enjoy this book. (Book one does not include any Deaf characters, but it is alot of fun.)

This book focuses on Ptesa' Wakandagi (Tesa), a Deaf American Indian girl who is sent to work with an alien species, the Grus, and learn their sign language. I read it the first time back in 1991 or 2 and have re-read it a few times.

Welcome!! Wow. You know about a lot of books. You will be a welcome addition. I'm not too into Scifi, but that Silent Dances sounds interesting. I will look it up. Thanks!

Silent Songs

This is book 5 of the StarBridge series and returns to Tesa's story of working with the Grus to save their homeworld. A Deaf, female, American Indian hero of a sci-fi novel is pretty unique -- and she gets two book out of an 8 book series!

Cool! Maybe they should make them into movies.

Yes, I think they would make great movies. Ptesa speaks ASL, but the Grus have thir own sign language which she has to learn. I think that would be cool to watch. A Deaf hero, aliens who sign and TWO signed languages all in one movie!

Cool! Thanks for all those suggestions Adam. I'm reading Journey into the Deaf-World right now. It's pretty good and I'm definitely learning a lot about deaf culture and ASL. I especially enjoy the sections that are more about the linguistics of ASL. I also recently finished Oliver Sack's Seeing Voices which is really good.

I'm also glad to hear that you became so proficient in sign even though you didn't start until college. I'm 18 and am taking my first ASL class this semester. I absolutely LOVE it, but was afraid that it would be difficult to master the language when I started so late. You give me hope! :-)

It's also really cool that you studied sign linguistics. I'm planning on majoring in linguistics and find sign absolutely fascinating. The school I'm going to for my under grad doesn't offer ASL though, but the junior college near it has an ASL department and I'm going to try to continue taking sign there.

Hi Grace!!

I got another find that I just made and read this week and simply forgot to mention here.

Hi all, I just wanted to say how much I enjoy hearing of your wonderful suggestions (I'm a huge deaf lit nerd!)

Adam, you're studying sign language linguistics? In general or specifically for ASL/TSL? I ask because I'm stuyding ASL linguistics at Gallaudet now! Grace, wanting to major in linguisics is a great choice!

Talk Talk
Here's my latest favorite! I've read it at least two times, and I think it's due for another read. And, fitting right in with the movie discussion, I think it would make a FANTASTIC flick :)

I am Deaf. Received 3 deaf books for Christmas.
1. Anything But Silent by Mark Drolsbaugh
2. Deaf Again by Mark Drolsbaugh
3. Deadly Charm - The Story of a Deaf Serial Killer

Happy New Year

OK here is another book by a deaf person: Cyril Axelrod, And the Journey Begins. He is a deaf-blind man born in South Africa who converted from Judaism to Catholicism and became a priest. http://www.forestbooks.com/forest/bio...

Oh...I am hearing, have a deaf 17 year old daughter, go to a deaf church, want to write about it. :-)

That's awesome, Lana. Does your daughter get bullied a lot? There's another deaf author who just had a book release and she has a stop bullying campaign going on.

I would add Whisper by Chrissie Keighery (Perry), an Australian author. Her YA novel is great for its modern take on the Deaf experience.