front cover of Be Opened! The Catholic Church and Deaf Culture
Be Opened! The Catholic Church and Deaf Culture
Lana Portolano
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
Be Opened! The Catholic Church and Deaf Culture offers readers a people’s history of deafness and sign language in the Catholic Church. Paying ample attention to the vocation stories of deaf priests and pastoral workers, Portolano traces the transformation of the Deaf Catholic community from passive recipients of mercy to an active language minority making contributions in today’s globally diverse church. Background chapters familiarize readers with early misunderstandings about deaf people in the church and in broader society, along with social and religious issues facing deaf people throughout history. A series of connected narratives demonstrate the strong Catholic foundations of deaf education in sign language, including sixteenth-century monastic schools for deaf children and nineteenth-century French education in sign language as a missionary endeavor. The author explains how nineteenth-century schools for deaf children, especially those founded by orders of religious sisters, established small communities of Deaf Catholics around the globe. A series of portraits illustrates the work of pioneering missionaries in several different countries—“apostles to the Deaf”—who helped to establish and develop deaf culture in these communities through adult religious education and the sacraments in sign language. In several chapters focused on the twentieth century, the author describes key events that sparked a modern transformation in Deaf Catholic culture. As linguists began to recognize sign languages as true human languages, deaf people borrowed the practices of Civil Rights activists to gain equality both as citizens and as members of the church. At the same time, deaf people drew inspiration and cultural validation from key documents of Vatican II, and leadership of the Deaf Catholic community began to come from the deaf community rather than to it through missionaries. Many challenges remain, but this book clearly presents Deaf Catholic culture as an important and highly visible embodiment of Catholic heritage.
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Being and Hearing
Making Intelligible Worlds in Deaf Kathmandu
Peter Graif
HAU, 2018
How do deaf people in different societies perceive and conceive the world around them?  Drawing on three years of anthropological fieldwork in Nepali deaf communities, Being and Hearing shows how questions of cultural difference are profoundly shaped by local habits of perception. Beginning with the premise that philosophy and cultural intuition are separated only by genre and pedigree, Peter Graif argues that Nepali deaf communities—in their social sensibilities, political projects, and aesthetics of expression—present innovative answers to the very old question of what it means to be different.
 
From pranks and protests, to diverse acts of love and resistance, to renewed distinctions between material and immaterial, deaf communities in Nepal have crafted ways to foreground the habits of perception that shape both their own experiences and how they are experienced by the hearing people around them. By exploring these often overlooked strategies, Being and Hearing makes a unique contribution to ethnography and comparative philosophy.
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Belonging
Virginia Tibbs-Brelje
Gallaudet University Press, 1986
"A 1987 Outstanding Book for Young Adults" --University of Iowa Poll "Gustie Blaine is 15 when she contracts meningitis. After a long recovery period during which she loses the small amount of residual hearing she had seemed to retain, Gustie tries to pick up the pieces of her life. Her parents are unrealistic and over protective; her best friend rejects her; her teachers run the gamut from being convinced Gustie cannot function in the mainstream to being supportive... through a new boyfriend who has a deaf brother and sister-in-law, and through Gustie's visit with an understanding special education teacher to a class of predominately congenitally deaf students, readers are made aware of the tremendous range of difference among deaf and hard of hearing people, the ways in which they communicate and the technical aids available to them. Realistic and involving...[Young Adults] will identify with Gustie and her wish to belong; the book should touch them and be popular." --School Library Journal Virginia M. Scott is a writer. Like Gustie, the main character in her novel, Ms. Scott became deaf as an adolescent.
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Between Two Worlds
My Life as a Child of Deaf Adults
David Sorensen
Gallaudet University Press, 2019
In his memoir, David Sorensen explores his identity as a coda, or a child of Deaf adults. He describes his experiences with the roles often placed on codas at a young age, such as interpreter, confidant, and decision-maker. His story reveals a person seeking acceptance and belonging while straddling the Deaf and hearing worlds, and shows how he found reconciliation within himself and with both worlds.

       Sorensen relays the dynamics of his family life; he had a strained relationship with his father, who was an active leader and role model in the Deaf community and the Mormon Church, yet struggled to bond with his own son. Sorensen rebelled as a youth and left home as a teenager, completely detaching from the Deaf community. After struggling to establish himself as an independent adult, he discovered that he wanted to return to the Deaf world and use his ASL fluency and cultural understanding as a mental health therapist and community advocate. Now he considers himself an ambassador between the Deaf and hearing worlds, as well as between the older and younger generations of Deaf people. Between Two Worlds: My Life as a Child of Deaf Adults shares the unique experiences of a coda and passes on the rich cultural past shared by the American Deaf community.
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Bilingual Deaf and Hearing Families
Narrative Interviews
Barbara Bodner-Johnson
Gallaudet University Press, 2012

This study emphasizes the importance of family support for deaf members, particularly through the use of both American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken and/or written English. Research has shown how these factors influence such areas as a child’s development, performance in school, and relationships with brothers and sisters. In this volume, authors Barbara Bodner-Johnson and Beth S. Benedict concentrate on the vital, positive effects of bilingualism and how families that share their experiences with other families can enhance all of their children’s achievement and enrichment.

       Bilingual Deaf and Hearing Families: Narrative Interviews describes the experiences of ten families who have at least one deaf family member. In five of the families, the parents are hearing and they have a deaf child; two of the children in these families have cochlear implants. In three families, both the parents and children are deaf. In one family, the parents are deaf and their daughter is hearing; and in one family, the parents and one child are deaf and they all have cochlear implants, and the deaf child’s twin is hearing.

       The interviews were conducted in the families’ homes using set topics and questions. The family discussions cover a wide range of subjects: cochlear implants, where they live, their thoughts about family relationships, how they participate in the Deaf community, how they arrive at certain decisions, their children’s friendships, and the goals and resiliencies they have as a family.

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Bilingualism and Identity in Deaf Communities
Melanie Metzger
Gallaudet University Press, 2000

Is perception reality? Editor Melanie Metzger investigates the cultural perceptions by and of deaf people around the world in Bilingualism and Identity in Deaf Communities.

       “All sociocultural groups offer possible solutions to the dilemma that a deaf child presents to the larger group,” write Claire Ramsey and Jose Antonio Noriega in their essay, “Ninos Milagrizados: Language Attitudes, Deaf Education, and Miracle Cures in Mexico.” In this case, Ramsey and Noriega analyze cultural attempts to “unify” deaf children with the rest of the community. Other contributors report similar phenomena in deaf communities in New Zealand, Nicaragua, and Spain, paying particular attention to how society’s view of deaf people affects how deaf people view themselves.

       A second theme pervasive in this collection, akin to the questions of perception and identity, is the impact of bilingualism in deaf communities. Peter C. Hauser offers a study of an American child proficient in both ASL and Cued English while Annica Detthow analyzes “transliteration” between Spoken Swedish and Swedish Sign Language. Like its predecessors, this sixth volume of the Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities series distinguishes itself by the depth and diversity of its research, making it a welcome addition to any scholar’s library.

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Black Deaf Students
A Model for Educational Success
Carolyn E. Williamson
Gallaudet University Press, 2007

Contemporary research has identified resilience — the ability to rebound and learn despite obstacles and adversities — as a key element to success in school. Black Deaf Students: A Model for Educational Success searches out ways to develop, reinforce, and alter the factors that encourage resilience in African American deaf and hard of hearing students. To find the individual characteristics and outside influences that foster educational achievement, author Carolyn E. Williamson conducted extensive interviews with nine African American deaf and hard of hearing adults who succeeded in high school and postsecondary programs.

       Until now, the majority of studies of African American deaf and hard of hearing students concentrated upon their underachievement. The only success stories available involved high-achieving African American hearing students. To create an effective model in Black Deaf Students, Williamson focuses on the factors that contributed to her subjects’ successes in postsecondary programs, what they viewed as obstacles and how they overcame them, and their recommendations for facilitating graduation from postsecondary programs. Her work gives “voice” to a group rarely heard in research, which enables readers to view them as a heterogeneous rather than homogeneous group. Their stories provide vital information for parents, school personnel, community stakeholders, and those enrolled in education and mental health preparation programs. In addition, the insights about how these adults succeeded can be useful in facilitating positive outcomes for students who are going into two-year colleges, vocational training, and work settings.

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front cover of Building Bridges, Crossing Borders
Building Bridges, Crossing Borders
One Young Deaf Woman’s Education
Ann Darby Getty
Gallaudet University Press, 2014
Kyler Daniels was born in 1988 with a profound bilateral hearing loss. Her deafness went undetected for a year since newborn screening for hearing loss was not yet available. Kyler benefited, however, from the great support of her family and a string of excellent professionals in deaf education, including Ann Darby Getty, the author of this shared, experiential story.

       As soon as they realized that their daughter was deaf, Kyler’s parents, who were hearing, immediately began to learn sign language. They also engaged Darby, a parent/infant educator employed by the state school for the deaf, to work with Kyler. From the age of 13 months until Kyler’s college graduation 22 years later, Darby was involved in her education and development.

       Despite living in a rural area, Kyler enjoyed an array of services, including parent/infant education, sign language interaction/modeling, speech and language therapy, and also a cochlear implant. At the same time that she developed her speech skills, sign language continued to be a critically important facet of her communication. In grade school, she learned with other deaf students, while in high school, she worked successfully in mainstream classrooms with interpreters and notetakers. As a college graduate, gifted artist, and veterinarian’s assistant today, Kyler exemplifies how a balanced approach to deaf education, using all resources at hand, can achieve remarkable results. Her story serves as a model for parents of other deaf children and the professionals who work with them.
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