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In July 2012, the 8th Deaf History International (DHI) Conference featured 27 presentations from members of Deaf communities around the world who related their own autobiographies as well as the biographies of historical Deaf individuals. The presenters came from 12 different countries, but their stories traverse many other locales. Thus, they created a transnational phenomenon of widespread interest in the collection, documentation, and dissemination of Deaf history by and for members of the deaf community. Telling Deaf Lives: Agents of Change brings together the best of the DHI Conference offerings in this volume.

     Due to the dearth of formal research on deaf people, Deaf community historians drove the preservation of the stories in this collection. Their diversity is remarkable: Melissa Anderson and Breda Carty describe the Cosmopolitan Correspondence Club, a group of Deaf individuals who corresponded in the early 20th century from Australia to Western Europe to the United States; Ulla-Bell Thorin recounts first-hand growing up deaf in Sweden and her process in authoring six memoirs; Harry Lang reflects on writing biographies of numerous Deaf Americans in the arts and science; Akio Suemori profiles the first Deaf president of a Japanese school for the Deaf; Tatiana Davidenko writes about her Deaf family’s experience during the World War II siege of Leningrad; Theara Yim and Julie Chateauvert look at the evolution of ASL poetry by analyzing works of prominent ASL poets Clayton Valli, Peter Cook, and Kenny Lerner. These and the other contributions here enshrine Deaf people in collective memory by virtue of disseminating and preserving their stories.

Concerned about aspects of her romantic relationships, Donna McDonald consulted with a psychologist who asked, “Your hearing loss must have had a big impact on you?” At age 45, with a successful career in social work policy, McDonald took umbrage at the question. Then, she realized that she never had addressed the personal barrier she had constructed between her deaf-self and her hearing persona. In The Art of Being Deaf, she describes her long, arduous pursuit of finding out exactly who she was.
 
       Born in 1950s Australia, McDonald was placed in an oral deaf school when she was five. There, she was trained to communicate only in spoken English. Afterwards, she attended mainstream schools where she excelled with speechreading and hard work. Her determination led to achievements that proved her to be “the deaf girl that had made good.” Yet, despite her constant focus on fitting in the hearing world, McDonald soon realized that she missed her deaf schoolmates and desired to explore her closed-off feelings about being deaf.
 
       When she reconnected with her friends, one urged her to write about her experiences to tell all about “the Forgotten Generation, the orally-raised deaf kids that no one wants to talk about.” In writing her memoir, McDonald did learn to reconcile her deaf-self with her “hearing-deaf” persona, and she realized that the art of being deaf is the art of life, the art of love.

The seminal study of the antecedents of Deaf culture is now back in print. Edited by renowned scholar Harlan Lane, The Deaf Experience: Classics in Language and Education presents a selection of the earliest essays written by members of the nascent French Deaf community at the time of the Enlightenment, a rich period of education for deaf people.

The fifth volume in the Gallaudet Classics in Deaf Studies series features works written from 1764 up to1840. Pierre Desloges offers a stirring paean to sign language in an excerpt from his book, the first ever published by a deaf person. Saboureux de Fontenay and Jean Massieu, two prominent leaders, relate their respective experiences in autobiographical accounts. In separate essays, Charles-Michel de l’Epée and Roch-Ambroise Sicard describe systems for teaching manual French, followed by a critique of these methods by Roch-Ambroise Bébian, a well-known hearing friend of Deaf people during that era. Ferdinand Berthier, a renowned Deaf teacher and writer in the 19th century, concludes with a history of Deaf people up to that time.

The Deaf Experience shows clearly how this extraordinary era of French deaf education influenced the adoption of the manual method by the first schools for deaf students in America, in sharp contrast to the oral movement that repressed sign-language-centered education for nearly a century afterward. Deaf studies scholars and students alike will welcome the return of this invaluable resource.

The sudden discovery of Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) enthralled scholars worldwide who hoped to witness the evolution of a new language. But controversy erupted regarding the validity of NSL as a genuinely spontaneous language created by young children. Laura Polich’s fascinating book recounts her nine-year study of the Deaf community in Nicaragua and her findings about its formation and that of NSL in its wake.

     Polich crafted The Emergence of the Deaf Community in Nicaragua from her copious research in Nicaragua’s National Archives, field observations of deaf pupils in 20 special education schools, polls of the teachers for deaf children about their education and knowledge of deafness, a survey of 225 deaf individuals about their backgrounds and living conditions, and interviews with the oldest members of the National Nicaraguan Association of the Deaf.

     Polich found that the use of a “standardized” sign language in Nicaragua did not emerge until there was a community of users meeting on a regular basis, especially beyond childhood. The adoption of NSL did not happen suddenly, but took many years and was fed by multiple influences. She also discovered the process that deaf adolescents used to attain their social agency, which gained them recognition by the larger Nicaraguan hearing society. Her book illustrates tremendous changes during the past 60 years, and the truth in one deaf Nicaraguan’s declaration, “With sign language you can learn so much.”

On April 8, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln and the United States Congress put into effect legislation authorizing the granting of collegiate degrees by the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind. At this moment, what became Gallaudet University began a century and a half of offering a collegiate liberal arts education to deaf and hard of hearing students. Featuring more than 250 photographs and illustrations, David F. Armstrong’s The History of Gallaudet University: 150 Years of a Deaf American Institution chronicles its development into a modern, comprehensive American university.
 
At first a tiny college of fewer than 200 students, Gallaudet’s growth paralleled the emergence of the American Deaf Community and the history of the nation in general. In the same way that the country’s land-grant universities brought higher education to more American students than ever before, Gallaudet offered the same opportunities to deaf students for the first time.  Gallaudet mirrored other institutions in addressing major issues of the time, from legislated segregation to the Civil Rights movement that inspired the struggle by deaf people to gain control of the governance of their university. Most critically, this volume details poignantly the evolution of American Sign Language as a language of scholarship at Gallaudet during a time when its use in educational institutions was largely discouraged or prohibited. Through story and image, it traces the historic path that Gallaudet traveled to be recognized as the finest institution of higher education for deaf people in the world.

Author Charlotte Abrams presents this proud family sketch early on in her memoir of life in Chicago with her sister and her deaf parents. Hers is a loving portrayal of how a close Jewish family survived the Depression and the home front hardships of World War II with the added complications of communication for her mother and father. Rich episodes detail history from a particularly acute point of view that entertain as they subtly inform. Her father, a former prizefighter, considered the gift of a radio an intrusion until he found that he could have his hearing daughters pantomime the Joe Louis - Billy Conn fight as it occurred.

The Silents departs from other narratives about deaf parents and hearing children when the family discovers that Abrams’ mother is becoming blind. With resiliency, the family turned the secret, terrifying sorrow their mother felt at losing her only contact with the world into a quest for the best way to bring it back. Should she learn Braille? Should she use a cane? All of the old communication and day-to-day living routines had to be relearned. And through it all, the family and their neighbors, hearing and deaf, worked together to ensure that Abrams’ parents remained the close, vital members of the community that they had always been.

In this heartfelt memoir, Maria Wallisfurth recounts the lives of her deaf parents in Germany from the turn of the twentieth century through World War II. Her mother, Maria Giefer, was born in 1897 and her father, Wilhelm Sistermann, was born in 1896. The author captures the seasonal rhythms and family life of her mother’s youth in rural Germany, a time filled as much with hardship as it is with love. When she is old enough, she moves to the nearby city of Aachen to attend a school for deaf children, where she learns to lipread and speak. After her schooling is complete, she returns home to work on the family farm and experiences the privations and fear that accompany World War I. She later goes back to Aachen, where she joins a deaf club and falls in love with Wilhelm, a painter and photographer who was raised in the city. Amidst high unemployment, food shortages, and rapid inflation, the two are married in 1925 and two years later the author is born. Under the Nazi regime, Maria and Wilhelm are ordered to undergo forced sterilization. Although their deafness is not hereditary and they submit applications of protest, they are compelled to comply with the law.
       Despite their dissimilar backgrounds and the political circumstances that roiled their lives, the author’s parents showed great love for each other and their only daughter. The Stories They Told Me is a richly detailed document of time and place and a rare account of deaf lives during this era.

In 200 full-color and black-and-white photographs, The Week the World Heard Gallaudet depicts, day by day, the Deaf President Now! Revolution at Gallaudet University as it unfolded March 6 - 13, 1988. Author Jack Gannon interviewed such main characters as Greg Hlibok, president of the student government, and Elizabeth Zinser, the University’s president for two days. I. King Jordan, Gallaudet’s first deaf president, contributed the epilogue.