3at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, MA. Heraccount of the methods used (for example, repeating the sameword over and over again, as many as 35 times), animates theextraordinary amount of work performed by deaf children tolearn to read and speak. Cyrus also relates the importance of her lifelong friendships with two girls she met at Clarke, andhow the different paths that they took influenced her as anadult.Eileen Katz’s story, as told to Celeste Cheyney, offers aglimpse into a deaf girl’s life a generation before Cyrus. InMaking Sense of It All: The Battle of Britain through aJewish Deaf Girl’s Eyes, Katz juxtaposes the gradual learningof the words who, what, where, and why with the confusingevents of 1938 to 1941. As she and her fellow studentsgrasped the meanings of these questions, they also realized the threat from the Nazi air attacks uponEngland. Katz also understood the compound jeopardy that she and her classmates faced by being bothdeaf 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 sevencountries in Africa to teach administrators, teachers, and deaf students to communicate using sign,speech reading, writing, and any other means available. Her harrowing and fascinating anecdotes detailvisits 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.
About The Authors:
Bainy Cyrus is a counselor for mainstreamed deaf and disabled students in Tidewater, VA.Eileen Katz teaches sign language to twelfth graders at a hearing girls’ yeshiva and tells Jewish storiesto a senior citizen Deaf club in Brooklyn, NY.Celeste Cheyney has worked for nearly 40 years as a teacher at J47, the American Sign Language andEnglish school, and as a mentor for new teachers in various programs for people who are hard of hearingin New York City, NY.Frances M. Parsons is retired Associate Professor of History of Art and Coordinator of InternationalCollections at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC.
Publisher: Gallaudet University Press; 1st edition (March 15, 2005)ISBN-10: 1563683210ISBN-13: 978-1563683213