Deaf Women's Lives: Three Self-Portraits (Deaf Lives Series, Vol. 3) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Bainy Cyrus, Eileen Katz, Celeste Cheyney, Frances M. Parsons
Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
Category: Book
Buy New: $34.95
New (9) Used (6) from $8.58
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 851512
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 314
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 1.1
ISBN: 1563683210
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.90820922
EAN: 9781563683213
ASIN: 1563683210
Publication Date: March 15, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Three deaf women with widely varying stories share their experiences in this unique collection, revealing the vast differences in the circumstances of their lives, but also striking similarities. In Bainy Cyrus’s All Eyes, she vividly describes her life as a young child who was taught using the oral method at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, MA. Her account of the methods used (for example, repeating the same word over and over again, as many as 35 times), animates the extraordinary amount of work performed by deaf children to learn to read and speak. Cyrus also relates the importance of her lifelong friendships with two girls she met at Clarke, and how the different paths that they took influenced her as an adult.
Eileen Katz’s story, as told to Celeste Cheyney, offers a glimpse into a deaf girl’s life a generation before Cyrus. In Making Sense of It All: The Battle of Britain Through a Jewish Deaf Girl’s Eyes, Katz juxtaposes the gradual learning of the words who, what, where, and why with the confusing events of 1938 to 1941. As she and her fellow students grasped the meanings of these questions, they also realized the threat from the Nazi air attacks upon England. Katz also understood the compound jeopardy that she and her classmates faced by being both deaf and Jewish.
In contrast to the predominantly oral orientation of Cyrus and Katz, Frances M. Parsons writes of a year-long journey overseas in 1976 to lecture about Total Communication. Parsons traveled to Iran, India, Ceylon, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, the Philippines, Australia, and seven countries in Africa to teach administrators, teachers, and deaf students to communicate using sign, speechreading, writing, and any other means available. Her harrowing and fascinating anecdotes detail visits to ministries of education, schools, hospitals, clinics, palaces, hovels for the poorest of the poor, and all kinds of residential homes and apartments. Taken together, her travels testify to the aptness of her title I Dared!
The combined effect of these three Deaf women’s stories, despite the variation in their experiences, reveals the common thread that weaves through the lives of all deaf individuals.
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| Customer Reviews:
This book shattered most of my assumptions about deaf people November 25, 2005
Being a physician, albeit a hearing one, I considered myself fairly insightful about communicating with deaf people. How wrong I was! This book educated me in terms of "deaf awareness", helping me to understand better the challenges, and above all, the incredible hard work that deaf people face when functioning in a hearing world. For the first time, I glimpsed the rationale behind a deaf culture where sign language reigns supreme, where those of us who hear and talk with our voices are superfluous in a rich, rewarding personal life. I imagine that signing feels like putting on a comfortable pair of slippers after struggling all day in uncomfortable leather shoes that do not fit well!
In the book, the three women profiled show us three different approaches to communicating with others in their world. Most importantly for me is that they tell their stories as women - women who have made their way through life with courage, determination and great good humor. Such is the measure of success. In their work, these women have ministered to the deaf, as well as families, schools, and communities. Through this book, they minister to all of us, helping us understand some extraordinary people who cross our paths.
The lives of three deaf women through their own eyes and in their own words September 5, 2005
The collaborative effort of Bainy Cyrus, Eileen Katz, Celeste Cheyney, and Frances M. Parsons, Deaf Women's Lives: Three Self-Portraits presents the lives of three deaf women through their own eyes and in their own words. One works as a counselor for mainstreamed deaf and disabled students; one survived harrowing Nazi attacks upon England during World War II; and one has traveled the world to teach administrators and deaf students how to communicate better. Black-and-white photographs illustrate this inspirational triple biography of women who refused to let their inability to hear limit their lives or their dreams.
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