Silent Ears, Silent Heart: A Deaf Man's Journey Through Two Worlds
Silent Ears, Silent Heart brings tears to my eyes and with them a great sense of relief. Upon reading it, I am overwhelmed with many fond memories especially the ones that I never realized would have such a powerful impact on my life. There are many instances throughout the book that accurately typify the experiences of a successful deaf individual in a world of ignorance and marginalization. Throughout the book, there is an undeniable correlation between the socio-psychological development of deaf children and the degree of parental support and involvement. The importance of collectiveness in decision-making, consistency in providing loving support, and compliance for the best of the deaf child is manifested, vividly demonstrated and observed in the relationship of the deaf son and his father. A parent s lack of awareness of a profoundly deaf child s needs results in his or her life being not only more difficult than his or her hearing contemporaries, but simply more difficult than necessary and often accompanied by dejection. For the deaf, sign language communication comes to the rescue. As an extremely effective communication method, American Sign Language (ASL) maintains the same unique properties of language as any spoken language, including American English. It is a visual-gestural language that accurately exchanges abstract concepts and has been passed on from one contemporary to the next. ASL is able to convey "sounds," or phonemes, discretely in the form of handshape, movement, location, and orientation of the wrist, not to mention some non-manual facial expressions. In this book, ASL has helped the deaf son to lead a successful life in both the hearing and Deaf worlds. --Michael A Weingart, Sign Language Instructor - Monroe Community College, Rochester, New York