Welcome to National Deaf History Month! It runs through April, and during this time, I’ll be sharing posts about books by or in collaboration with Deaf, deaf and hard of hearing people.
Whew, that’s three terms: Hard of hearing, deaf, and Deaf! I’ll be using all three throughout April. Click this link to see what each word means according to Dr. Bill Vicars, Deaf professor of ASL and juggernaut of the internet. It’s worth it to educate yourself!
My goal is to introduce you to different lived experiences. We like to think that minority groups are all the same, but keep in mind that just as they say in the autism community, “If you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person,” and that applies to D/deaf people, too.
I’ll also add in some perspective from what I’ve learned in an Interpreter Training Program about Deaf culture where appropriate.
Learning to Be Deaf Without Losing Your Hearing, by Kim Harrell and S. Lea, has a specific audience in mind. It was written for students who have not studied Deaf Culture in depth but who need to know what life is like for Deaf people and their community. Essentially, ASL students who are not learning as much as they should about Deaf Culture will gain from reading this book. Really, it’s right in the title. S. Lea wrote Learning to Be Deaf. She is, her bio implies, a hearing person who learned ASL and Deaf Culture and was Kim Harrell’s student. This is Harrell’s story.
The memoir is written in third person. Never do we read “I,” instead it’s “she.” I’ve never seen this before, and I was surprised by how much closer that made me feel to Harrell. I suppose “I” is just one person, but “she” becomes a character I’m rooting for, especially with Harrell’s scrapy attitude from toddler-hood. At one point, I found myself crying, surprised I was so attached to “her.”
Harrell’s opinion of deafness is complicated compared to what I’ve learned. In my interpreter training program, we learn Deaf culture in every class, in addition to a class called Deaf Culture and the Advanced Deaf Studies course. The Deaf community is proud, capable, happy they are Deaf, and do not consider themselves disabled or impaired (hence the offense at the term “hearing impaired”). If you notice D is written with a capital D. That means I’m discussing Deaf as a culture of people who share norms, beliefs, and language, just like any other culture. Notice in recent years that Black is now capitalized — it’s the same idea, a reference to culture. Harrell explains that she never wanted to imply she had a disability because she felt she could do everything, “and that was that.” Thus, her attitude is very Deaf culture.
However, Harrell grew up on the fence because she was raised in hearing culture, meaning she was given hearing aids and spent years in speech therapy and practiced reading lips (although it’s estimated only around 30% of people can read lips). Harrell did not miss hearing when she was a child, and instead of learning auditorily, she knew the world visually, sucking up information like any toddler. Harrell’s mother did not think there was something “wrong” with her daughter when she seemed like an usual baby compared to the older children, just “different.” It is this positive attitude that propelled Harrell from infancy. Her family was an excellent support system, and her K-12 education bolstered Harrell, especially when she was supported by teachers, coaches, and hearing students.
Another value in Deaf culture is sharing information. Harrell describes a time she wrote a scathing review of an airline that was not Deaf friendly after she told several employees that she is deaf and cannot hear boarding announcements, so please let her know while she sits nearby. However, Deaf communities feel great pride that they attended and graduated from Deaf schools, i.e., public schools specially designed for Deaf children that typically have dorms because a state often only has one Deaf school. Harrell says that being brought up to speak and read lips mean she was not “sequestered away into residential schools.” Personally, I never read the word “sequestered” and feel positive about it, so I was interested to know that Harrell enjoyed her educational experience so much that she could not see the advantage of being with Deaf peers.
As she neared the end of high school, Harrell lost more of her hearing, which changed the way she operated. Gallaudet University, one of two colleges in the U.S. designed to teach d/Deaf students, was suggested to Harrell, but she knew that things would be different there. Upon arriving at Gallaudet, Harrell was frustrated with the students, believing they all felt pity for themselves and their deafness.
However, it was at Gallaudet that Harrell learned that if you’ve met one d/Deaf person, you’ve met one d/Deaf person. There is a range of what it means to be deaf. During her time at Gallaudet, the “Deaf Mecca” as it is sometimes called, Harrell admits she did not learn the value of Deaf culture, though it would happen in her future. Instead, she tried to maintain her acceptance in the “hearing world,” as she was raised, by sometimes speaking (and getting chewed out by her peers) while acknowledging she is deaf.
In my own studies, we’ve discussed how being in two worlds like Harrell is similar to a person with parents of two different races (which one do they identify with?) or a child of immigrants do they identify with their parents’ home country, or are they American?). In all these situations, people risk being told they’re not enough. Not deaf enough, not white or black enough, not Mexican or American enough, etc. I hope these comparisons elucidate what Harrell experienced. Because she was perceived as not deaf enough, among other reasons, Harrell left Gallaudet and graduated from Western Oregon University.
Harrell later opted for cochlear implants, a taboo topic in the Deaf community, but a decision each person has to make for themselves. Even more scandalous is the decision to force infants and children to have the procedure without their consent, but Harrell was not a minor. She was an adult. After her cochlear implants are turned on, Harrell realizes just how noisy she is, cranking up her music at home, revving her Harley Davidson so she could feel the vibrations, etc. Lea writes, “Now with her cochlear implant the first time she gunned her Harley, getting the attention from the drivers around her just like before, she realized the sound was ear-piercing and annoying. What an ass she had been.” I thought this was rather funny. I once saw a poll on Twitter that said something like “Deaf people are quiet: A) No, or B) LOL, No.”
Learning to Be Deaf Without Losing Your Hearing ends with a note on new assistive technology for people with hearing loss and deafness, a “Did You Know?” section with information like “more than 200 separate and distinct forms of sign language are used worldwide,” and a very honest chapter on the pros and cons of different Deaf communities and hearing people.
Grab the Lapels 
Enjoyed reading your post. It sounds like a good book. Regarding the Deaf people are quiet poll, that made me laugh. I have known a couple of deaf people and they were loud! FYI, your Dr. Bill link doesn’t work.
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Ope, thank you! I will check out the link and see what is up.
This was a tough first book to write about because the author teeters between two worlds. It’s sort of like when I read books about fat women who really want to be thin but also decide they’re good enough no matter their size. There’s a lot of two-sidedness.
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And people who grow up with deaf people. They can have very loud voices!
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This was a fascinating review, and the book sounds really interesting. As a half-Iranian person born and raised in America I can identify with “not feeling ____ enough.” (For me it’s not feeling Persian enough.) Interesting that the memoir is in third person. I can see how that might make you feel closer to the subject.
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I wondered if you might feel similarly. I know you try to learn Farsi, for instance, and celebrate some of the holidays. I’ve met children of immigrants whose parents refused to teach them the language of their country (typically Spanish) because they want their children to 100% speak English. This is also something that happens in the Deaf community if a Deaf person has a hearing child and doesn’t teach them ASL. I think it’s less common now, though.
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I learned a few things just reading this review! Thanks.
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I’m pretty sure “hard of hearing” covers where I’m at. I’ll get hearing aids some time this year. And although Milly says I’m deaf, and we all said my father was deaf, there’s a big difference between where I am and where the few deaf people I know are.
Also, I can’t lip read (or read facial expressions very well) but I definitely understand a lot better if I’m looking straight at the speaker.
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If you understand better when you’re looking straight at the person, chances are you ARE doing some lipreading, to some extent. Not that it is the main way in which you take in information, but it provides cues to fill in the gaps of what you missed hearing. During 2020, a lot of people realized just how much they do rely on lipreading cues because masks covered everyone’s (well, not everyone’s) mouths.
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[…] of the authors of Learning to Be Deaf Without Losing Your Hearing contacted me about doing an […]
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This is so fascinating! Your posts about Deaf culture, ASL etc. are some of my favourites of yours. Also, motorcycles revving are SOOOO annoying to me, so I appreciate she realizes this haha
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She never knew, and now she does! Ha, and she has (had?) a Harley, too. Just the worst! I come from a motorcycle family, but not a Harley family. That is not to say that Biscuit doesn’t get a little wild with her noise once in a while. My dad’s motorcycle sounds more like the Jetson’s car, lol.
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This sounds really interesting. I wonder if writing in third person allowed her to be more honest or vulnerable? She could separate herself from the “character” she was creating.
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Well, since then I emailed the author, and S. Lea replied. Based on what she wrote, I believe she is deaf, but she said her ASL skills aren’t good. Now, I’m wondering which one is deaf, who wrote the book, who the book is about (I thought Kim??), etc. It’s a lil mystery living in my email inbox.
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This is so interesting Melanie on so many levels. But firstly the hearing impairment issue. I know we’ve discussed this before and I totally understand why deaf people do not like the term hearing impairment because it makes them feel less lesser. However they are impaired as the writers of this memoir admit when they say they need help to hear a boarding announcement and criticise the airline for not helping them with this issue. So I think that while it’s fine to say we shouldn’t use hearing impairment to describe the situation it is disingenuous not to accept the fact that there is impairment. There are a few other things I’d like to talk about but the one I will mention here is the third person approach. I have read a memoir written in third person, Rosa memories with licence, by Ros Collins. In that review I wrote quite a bit about the third person approach. If you’re interested you might like to read my review because it’s too much to go into here, and also how it works in her book may not be how it works here or why they chose this voice, but I enjoyed reading about another book written this way.
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The big difference between “hearing impaired” and capital-D Deaf is entirely cultural, which I cannot explain in its full complexity in one comment. Think about how some people are Hispanic or Native American, but they don’t embrace it participate in the language or cultural traditions of their ancestors. I think it is similar with deafness, except deafness, 90% of the time, is not something parents and children share, so they must find their tribe, so to speak, to become Deaf. It’s complicated because if a Deaf person wants financial assistance (from the government), they just take a test to prove they are “hearing impaired.” A lot of Deaf people discuss how they aren’t impaired if they never had hearing to begin with. All in all, Sue, it’s complicated, but the important part is to separate the culture from the medical perspective.
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Yes, I understand Melanie … I was really just pointing out how it can sound illogical though I do appreciate the nuance.
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I think we do a lot of illogical stuff in the name of respecting culture. I still don’t understand why Canadians, Australians, and now some Americans, acknowledge they are on stolen land but don’t give it back to an indigenous family.
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Good question, but it’s all but impossible to turn that clock back. What is happening here is federal land is being given back in some instances, national parks in particular, with FN people seen to be the owner and co-management occurring. We are looking more and more at involving FN people in land management. In Tasmania there’s a visionary program called “Giving the land back” which is more ambitious in actually buying back land to give to FN people.
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[…] week, I shared a newer book called Learning To Be Deaf Without Losing Your Hearing by Kim Harrell and S. Lea. This week, we’re going back in time to the Civil War of the United […]
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