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A review by mattdube
Deaf Like Me by James P. Spradley, Thomas S. Spradley
3.0
An almost absurdly straight-forward memoir of a family with a deaf daughter-- this is full of interesting insight and answers all those questions I never knew to ask-- never even thought there were questions to ask-- about being deaf, growing up deaf and needing to be educated in a reasonably modern school system. This is no Helen Keller story, but it's still pretty shocking. And Spradley and this story are in the middle of what feels like a huge turning point in deaf history, addressing directly the causes and results of the focus on "oral culture," the idea that deaf students could learn to speak even if they couldn't hear. Of course that's kind of crazy, when you think about it, but who would? And the idea is given a decent amount of play here, before we get to the reversal, three quarters of the book through, when sign language appears.
It's a lot like a conversion story, in terms of its structure and the way it tries to persuade us. And it's also so direct that it has an artless feel, even though its in the shape of a narrative. It does read well, but you never forget that the art of this is secondary to the main ideas it wants to communicate. And that means that there are weird moments here, like the emphasis on the animal nature of deaf people trying to use oral language-- this recurs often, and is especially poignant and awkward when it comes up at the end, in a scene in Vegas when a kid is trapped in this animal life because his parents won't let him sign. It's weird, I'll say that.
The title gets explained in the text of the book-- it's something the deaf daughter of the narrator says when she realizes other people are like her-- but for me at least, the shadow of "Black Like Me" hung over this book, in a not-pleasant way.
It's a lot like a conversion story, in terms of its structure and the way it tries to persuade us. And it's also so direct that it has an artless feel, even though its in the shape of a narrative. It does read well, but you never forget that the art of this is secondary to the main ideas it wants to communicate. And that means that there are weird moments here, like the emphasis on the animal nature of deaf people trying to use oral language-- this recurs often, and is especially poignant and awkward when it comes up at the end, in a scene in Vegas when a kid is trapped in this animal life because his parents won't let him sign. It's weird, I'll say that.
The title gets explained in the text of the book-- it's something the deaf daughter of the narrator says when she realizes other people are like her-- but for me at least, the shadow of "Black Like Me" hung over this book, in a not-pleasant way.