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Written by authors who are themselves Deaf, this unique book
illuminates the life and culture of Deaf people from the inside,
through their everyday talk, their shared myths, their art and
performances, and the lessons they teach one another. Carol Padden
and Tom Humphries employ the capitalized "Deaf" to refer to deaf
people who share a natural language-American Sign Language (ASL-and
a complex culture, historically created and actively transmitted
across generations. Signed languages have traditionally been
considered to be simply sets of gestures rather than natural
languages. This mistaken belief, fostered by hearing people's
cultural views, has had tragic consequences for the education of
deaf children; generations of children have attended schools in
which they were forbidden to use a signed language. For Deaf
people, as Padden and Humphries make clear, their signed language
is life-giving, and is at the center of a rich cultural heritage.
The tension between Deaf people's views of themselves and the way
the hearing world views them finds its way into their stories,
which include tales about their origins and the characteristics
they consider necessary for their existence and survival. Deaf in
America includes folktales, accounts of old home movies, jokes,
reminiscences, and translations of signed poems and modern signed
performances. The authors introduce new material that has never
before been published and also offer translations that capture as
closely as possible the richness of the original material in ASL.
Deaf in America will be of great interest to those interested in
culture and language as well as to Deaf people and those who work
with deaf children and Deaf people.
In this absorbing story of the changing life of a community, the
authors of Deaf in America reveal historical events and forces that
have shaped the ways that Deaf people define themselves today.
Inside Deaf Culture relates Deaf people's search for a voice of
their own, and their proud self-discovery and self-description as a
flourishing culture. Padden and Humphries show how the
nineteenth-century schools for the deaf, with their denigration of
sign language and their insistence on oralist teaching, shaped the
lives of Deaf people for generations to come. They describe how
Deaf culture and art thrived in mid-twentieth century Deaf clubs
and Deaf theatre, and profile controversial contemporary
technologies. Most triumphant is the story of the survival of the
rich and complex language American Sign Language, long
misunderstood but finally recently recognized by a hearing world
that could not conceive of language in a form other than speech. In
a moving conclusion, the authors describe their own very different
pathways into the Deaf community, and reveal the confidence and
anxiety of the people of this tenuous community as it faces the
future. Inside Deaf Culture celebrates the experience of a minority
culture--its common past, present debates, and promise for the
future. From these pages emerge clear and bold voices, speaking out
from inside this once silenced community.
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