Seeing Voices

by Oliver Sacks

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  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  HISTORY OF THE DEAF

  The fullest history of deaf people, from their liberation in the 1750s to the (deadly) Milan conference of 1880, is given in Harlan Lane’s When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf.

&n
bsp; Excerpts from autobiographies of the first literate deaf and their teachers, during this period, are to be found in Harlan Lane, ed., The Deaf Experience: Classics in Language and Education, translated by Franklin Philip.

  A pleasant, informal history of the deaf, full of personal vignettes and fascinating illustrations, is provided by Jack R. Gannon in Deaf Heritage: A Narrative History of Deaf America.

  Edward Gallaudet himself wrote a half-autobiographical history of Gallaudet College, History of the College for the Deaf, 1857–1907.

  A remarkably informative and lengthy article, under the heading of “Deaf and Dumb,” may be found in the “scholars’ ” (11th) edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

  ISLANDS OF THE DEAF

  An extremely vivid, poignant account of the unique Martha’s Vineyard community is Nora Ellen Groce’s Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha’s Vineyard.

  BIOGRAPHIES AND AUTO BIOGRAPHIES

  David Wright’s Deafness is the most beautiful account of acquired deafness known to me.

  A more recent book by Lou Ann Walker, A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family, draws a powerful picture of life as a hearing child of deaf parents.

  The Quiet Ear: Deafness in Literature, compiled by Brian Grant, with a preface by Margaret Drabble, is an extremely readable and varied anthology of short pieces by or about deaf people.

  A vivid account of a rich, creative life is Lessons in Laughter by the eminent deaf actor Bernard Bragg. Interestingly, this was not written (though Bragg, a Shakespearean actor, is intensely literate), but signed (for Sign, not English, is Bragg’s first language) and then translated into English.

  Another fascinating account of a full and creative life is What’s that Pig Outdoors, by the book editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, Henry Kisor. Kisor lost his hearing at three and a half, when he had already acquired speech and language—he does not sign, but lip-reads and speaks. Kisor does not identify himself as culturally Deaf, and his life, unlike Bernard Bragg’s, has been spent entirely in the hearing world.