Deaf author: Don't buy my book

Adam Pottle doesn't want you to buy his new book, "The Most Awesome Character in the World." The children's story follows a young deaf girl who decides to write her own book. The Canadian writer who was born deaf is unhappy with an illustration the publisher, New York's Reycraft Books, inserted depicting what he calls an "Asian stereotype." Pottle told the CBC: "The book is supposed to be a celebration of deaf culture, it's supposed to be a celebration of the deaf community, and of imagination." Read more about the story here.

Remembering a "tireless champion and advocate for the Deaf community"

Harlan Lane
PHOTO: Mary Knox Merrill/Northeastern University

Harlan Lane died a year ago today (July 13, 2019) at the age of 82 from Parkinson’s disease. A psychologist and linguist, Lane helped to found the ASL program at Northeastern University. But he will mostly be remembered as a "tireless champion and advocate for the Deaf community." Among the books he authored was The People of the Eye: Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry. He argued in the book that deafness is not a disability but a unique community. Lane became interested in Deaf culture and ASL in the 1970s while teaching at the University of California, San Diego. He happened upon students who were signing to each other and wanted to learn more. He explained in an interview with the Northeastern in 2011 here. The interim co-director of the ASL Program at Northeastern, Angela Herbert, said:

Professionally speaking, he was decades before his time in terms of understanding the value of Deaf people and the Deaf community. There are so many books on ASL, Deaf culture, and the Deaf community now, but when Harlan was starting out, that just wasn’t the case.

People at Gallaudet University remember Lane as a professor in the 1980s who was an outspoken member of the “Deaf President Now” movement. Read more about Lane here.

Show me a Sign

A new historical novel called Show me a Sign follows the life of an 11-year-old girl on Martha’s Vineyard in the 19th Century. Intended for children ages 8 to 12, author Ann Clare LeZotte, who is deaf herself, takes the reader into a group of deaf residents who were descendants of English colonists and have developed their own sign language. At one point the girl tells herself, “Papa was right. We are fine as we were made.” The New York Times reviewed the book and says:

Dialogue, both spoken and signed, is handled deftly, showing the rich cadences and patterns of each form of expression. LeZotte also gives readers a sense of M.V.S.L. (Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language), a combination of “home sign” and American Sign Language used by the islanders through the mid-1900s.

Read the full review here.

Deaf Republic

Hard-of-hearing poet Ilya Kaminsky has written a new book called Deaf Republic. Kaminsky was born in the former Soviet Union and his new book, which is really a collection of poems, imagines deafness as a collective form of resistance against a military regime. 

From Deafness at Birth to the Ivy League

A new book coming out this month tells the story of a deaf boy whose skill at basketball led him to an Ivy League school. The book was written by the father of Christopher Caulfield. Titled Ephphatha (which means "to be opened"), the subtitle sums it up: "Growing up Profoundly Deaf and Not Dumb in the Hearing World: A Basketball Player's Transformational Journey to the Ivy League." Thomas Caulfield explains the ignorance he and his wife often encountered in education as they advocated for their son. Ephphatha is available on Amazon here. To learn more about the family, click here. Below is a video featuring Chris and his experience at RIT's NTID (National Technical Institute for the Deaf).  He's now a graduate student at Cornell and getting some experience at Microsoft.

Copies of Silent Garden given out in Fresno

Deaf educators in Fresno passed out the latest version of a book called The Silent Garden: a parent's guide to raising a deaf child. The book was written by Fresno State professor Dr. Paul Ogden and he was on hand as well. ABC-30 has a video report below. There's a text version of the story here.

Longtime Gally administrator passes

image from Gallaudet Archives

A Gallaudet University administrator and scholar who wrote and edited books about deaf people during the Holocaust and the portrayal of deaf people on-screen, has died of cancer. John Schuchman was 79 years old. A CODA, Dr. Schuchman's first language was ASL. He wrote  Hollywood Speaks: Deafness and the Film Entertainment Industry as well as Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe. Read more about him from the Gallaudet website here and from the Washington Post here. During his 34 years at Gallaudet, he served as a dean, vice president of academic affairs and provost.

Civil War pivotal in deaf history

"The (American) Civil War dramatically changed the course of deaf people’s lives. In many ways, the national crisis empowered many to believe in their own abilities," writes Harry G. Lang, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Lang explains out it brought "the nation's deaf population out of society's shadows. Read about it in Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle.

The Deaf and the Civil War

A new book tells what deaf people did during the Civil War. Written by Harry Lang, who teaches at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, the book is called Fighting in the Shadows: The Untold Story of Deaf People in the Civil War. Lang says the book is about "how they put aside the oppression and discrimination they faced in order to join the greater conflict that was dividing the nation.” Read more at the NTID site here.

Book breaks new ground

A new book and conference in the UK represent “a major leap forward for the discipline” of deaf studies. It's "the first volume to be written and edited entirely by deaf academics" about BSL, according to the Times Higher Education. Read more about the conference and the Oxford University Press book "Innovations in Deaf Studies: The Role of Deaf Scholars" here.

Deaf baseball player Still Inspires

The Columbus Dispatch takes a look at a new children's book about a deaf major leaguer called The William Hoy Story: How a Deaf Baseball Player Changed the Game. Author Nancy Churnin writes "He showed how a deaf man could succeed in a hearing world at a time when deaf people encountered great prejudice. That’s one of the reasons he is such a hero in the deaf community.” Read the entire review here.

The Grinch told in ASL

The daughter of Sheena McFeely and Manny Johnson is back again with a new Christmas story. Last year it was The Night Before Christmas and this year it is How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Shaylee is featured in both videos in promotion of her parents ASL learning site called ASLnook. Take a look at what this Cindy Lou look-alike does to the story.

Jacobs visit PA school

image from ESU website

A former Gallaudet professor spent last weekend talk about his research and books at a Pennsylvania University. Paul Gordon Jacobs particularly focused on his autobiography novel called Neither-Nor. Jacobs is oral deaf, doesn't use sign and left Gallaudet because "he felt his views differed from the professors who taught there." The Pocono Record has more on his visit to East Stroudsburg University here.

A real superhero: El Deafo!

The first graphic novel from deaf artist CeCe Bell is getting some traction in the media. The Washington Post calls the story of her alter ego "funny..beautiful and utterly engaging." El Deafo! includes Bell's memories of childhood from the meningitis at age 4 that left her profoundly deaf to her battles in school where she was mainstreamed. Read an interview with Bell in the Washington Post here.

Living with Usher Syndrome

Rebecca Alexander's new memoir Not Fade Away talks about her learning to deal with losing her hearing and sight as teen when she "couldn’t imagine living into adulthood.” But not only did she learn to live with Usher Syndrome, she's embraced her situation and even plans to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro next year. Read more about her life in a New York Post article here.

Marvel comic featuring deaf hero

Marvel's Hawkeye is deaf, thanks to writer Matt Fraction. Find out why Fraction decided to create the comic book arrow-wielding hero with the experience of severe hearing loss in a KSL-TV post here.  You'll also discover why the issue was dedicated to a deaf teenager living in Utah.

A Son’s Deafness Prompts a Scientific Journey

Lydia Denworth's new book I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey Through the Science of Sound and Language "explores both what happened to her own child and the relationship between the brain and sound and language." Read more about it in the New York Times here.

Communication tips from the deaf

A business consultant argues that deaf people have much to teach the hearing about effective communication. Bruno Kahne's book  Deaf Tips – Powerful Communication (which came out this past fall) suggests "Deaf people are not deaf when they are together, only when they are in contact with hearing people" and their communication abilities to pass messages is "much faster and more precisely than any hearing person." Read more in the Independent here.

Smutty Signs

Kristin Henson is causing a stir with her new book Super Smutty Sign Language. The book is based on her 90-some YouTube videos detailing dirty signs she learned as a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology where she studied animation--not sign language. The book got a boost when the Huffington Post picked up a column written by Henson (which you can read here) where she explains the idea behind the book. She has drawn criticism from people in the deaf community for her signing skills, leading a group to start a petition in an attempt to convince St. Martin's not to publish the book. You can express you own view of the book in the poll on DeafNewsToday.com.

Why the Deaf May Have Trouble Reading

A University of New Mexico study suggests that reading difficulties among the deaf do not have to do with "the right way to teach reading when you can’t associate sounds with letters." Instead, researchers say, "We’re finding is that all this time we’ve been ignoring the fact that they’re actually learning a new language.” The study isn't new but it's the first time we've shared the research at DeafNewsToday.com. You can read the study here and this video report comes from the VOA (Voice of America) and captions are included.