Deaf Literature Sampler: Deaf Blind
Asterik * indicates a D/deaf author. All book reviews are either from All
book reviews are either from Amazon, the Einstein Catalog, publishing
catalogs, bibliographies in the back of anthologies, Janet Rosen, a librarian
from Washington, DC, and articles by Robert Panara. Efforts have been made to
include as many genres as possible—nonfiction (autobiographies, personal
narratives, biographies, essays, interviews and articles), drama, fiction (novels,
historical fiction) poetry (ASL and English) and ASL Literature. All formats
are covered, including videos.
For more books on this topic, check the Einstein Catalog and search by keywords
deaf blind http://albert.rit.edu/. For
more articles on this topic, check out the Gallaudet Index to Deaf Periodicals
which includes citations to Deaf Life and other popular deaf publications. http://liblists.wrlc.org/gadpi/home.htm. Another database you might want to try is the NTID Index to Interpreting and
Deaf Periodicals. Go to the Deaf Studies databases http://wally.rit.edu/electronic/topic/deafstudies.html.
Also, The Tactile Mind is a literary print publication for the signing community.
http://www.thetactilemind.com/.
(John Lee Clark, Publisher of the Tactile Mind is a deaf-blind writer). We have
this publication on the CMS and in bound periodical format (back issues). PER
PS508.D43T335. You can also subscribe to a free weekly e-zine.
Another journal you might find useful is Sign Language Studies available online
via the Einstein Catalog in the Project Muse database. http://albert.rit.edu/search/tsign+language+studies/tsign+language+studies/1,2,9,B/frameset&FF=tsign+language+studies&7,,8/indexsort=-
If a book is not housed at Wallace Library or ETRR , try Connect NY http://www.connectny.info/screens/opacmenu.html
to see if area college libraries have it. If not, send your request via Interlibrary
Loan http://wally.rit.edu/myaccount/ill.html.Your
book usually arrives within a few days.
Autobiographies/Personal Narratives
*Eyes and Ears: Or the History of One Who Was Deaf and Blind.
London: Rivingtons, 1863. 4th floor, HV1947.E9 1863.
*Fischer, Catherine Hoffpauir as told to Cathryn Carroll. Orchid of the
Bayou: A Deaf Woman Faces Blindness. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University
Press, 2001. 3rd floor, RF292.8 .C37 2001 and ETRR (2 copies).
Mama knew I was 'not right'" Kitty Fischer says of her early childhood
in Louisiana. Her communication difficulties were compounded by the bias her
family endured for being Cajun. But Fischer excelled at the Louisiana School
for the Deaf, and left her Cajun roots far behind for Gallaudet University in
Washington, DC. After graduating and marrying her college sweetheart Lance,
a Deaf Jewish man from New York, Kitty settled in, working as a librarian and
raising a family. Eventually, though she could no longer ignore her increasing
tunnel vision. Doctors quickly confirmed that she had Usher syndrome, a genetic
condition that eventually leads to blindness. While Fischer struggled to come
to terms with her condition, the high incidence of Usher syndrome among Cajun
peoples led her to reexamine and reclaim her cultural heritage. Today Fischer
prospers, enjoying her time with family and friends and celebrating the Deaf,
Cajun, Blind, and Jewish cultures that shape her life. Her lively story will
resonate with anyone who recognizes the arduous journey towards claiming an
identity.
*Keller, Helen. Midstream: My Later Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Doran and Co. Inc., 1968. 4th floor (2 copies) HV1624.K4A17 1968.
Autobiographical account of Helen’s life.
*Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1905. 4th floor and Archives HV1624.K4A15 1905.
Autobiography of Helen Keller.
*Lawhorn, Geraldine. On Different Roads. New York: Vantage Press,
Inc., 1991. 4th floor, HV1624 .L39 1991
Autobiography of Geraldine, a black and deaf- blind woman.
MacDonald, Roderick J. “Deaf Blindness: An Emerging Culture?”. The
Deaf Way. Ed. Carol Erting. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press,
1988. REF, 4th floor and ETRR HV2359 .I487 1989
Biographies
Boggs-Qualls, Rosezelle. Walking Free: The Nellie Zimmerman Story. Richmond,
IND: Densmore Reid Publications, 2002. 4th floor HV 1624.Z5 B644 2001.
A biographical docudrama about the deaf and blind Nellie L. Zimmerman. After
the death of her father, Nellie was committed to the Massillon State Mental
Hospital at the age of 52. With no one on the staff trained in communicating
with the deaf-blind, Nellie lived in silence for 19 years. After she was released
from the State Hospital in 1976, at the age of 71, she lived her life as if
she were making up for lost time. With the help of her companion Emily Street,
she attended Malone College, became a well-known lecturer throughout Northeast
Ohio, and worked as a life skills instructor for deaf and deaf-blind boys. This
inspiring true story will give you rare insight into the life of this amazing
woman, who won many awards and was recognized by the Ohio State House of Representatives
as an outstanding Ohioan.
Freeberg, Ernest. The Education of Laura Bridgman: First Deaf and Blind
Person to Learn Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.,
2001. 4th floor and ETRR HV1624.B7 F74 2001.
Anticipating the life of Helen Keller a half-century later, Laura Bridgman's
is a pioneering tale of her journey from isolation to accomplishment. This book
is both a success story of how a sightless and soundless girl gained contact
with an ever-widening world, and also a cautionary tale about the way moral
crusades and scientific progress can compromise each other.
Gitter, E. The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the
Original Deaf-Blind Girl. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
4th floor and ETRR HV1624.B7 G57 2001.
In 1837, Samuel Gridley Howe, the director of Boston's Perkins Institution for
the Blind, heard about Laura Bridgman, a bright deaf-blind seven-year-old, the
daughter of New Hampshire farmers. At once he resolved to rescue her from the
"darkness and silence of the tomb." And indeed, thanks to Howe and
an extraordinary group of female teachers, Laura learned to finger spell, to
read raised letters, and to write legibly and even eloquently.Philosophers,
poets, educators, theologians, and early psychologists hailed Laura as a moral
inspiration and a living laboratory for the most controversial ideas of the
day. She quickly became a major tourist attraction, and many influential writers
and reformers -- Carlyle, Dickens, and Hawthorne among them -- visited her or
wrote about her. But as the Civil War loomed and her girlish appeal faded, the
public began to lose interest. By the time Laura died in 1889, she had beenwholly
eclipsed by the prettier, more ingratiating Helen Keller.The Imprisoned Guest
recovers Laura Bridgman's forgotten life, placing it in the context of nineteenth-century
American social, intellectual, and cultural history. Her troubling, tumultuous
relationship with Howe, who rode Laura's achievements to his own fame but could
not cope with the intense, demanding adult she became, sheds light on the contradictory
attitudes of a reform era in which we can find some precursors to our own.
Lamson, M. S. Life and Education of Laura Dewey Bridgman: The Deaf, Dumb
and Blind Girl. New York: Arno Press, 1978. 4th floor, HV1624.B7L2 1975.
Mactavish, J. Bravo! Miss Brown. Toronto, CA: CAVU Inc., 2000.
4th floor, HV1624.B76 M33 2001
Born in 1935, the third child of a bush worker on a homestead west of Thunder
Bay, she walked the six miles to and from school as long as she was able to
do so. She then received teaching at a home from her devoted and determined
mother through correspondence courses as her sight steadily decreased. She would
lose her hearing later. Graduating from the University of Toronto in 1972, Mae
was the first person who was deaf-blind to do so in Canada, and possibly the
second woman in the world since Helen Keller. How this was accomplished over
13 years, 12 months a year, how she coped with periods of loneliness, love relationships
and heartbreaks, and how she strove to prove she was just a normal girl who
could not see and hear is a poignant, revealing and inspiring tale, unique in
every way.
Man, J. The Survival of Jan Little. New York, N.Y.: Viking, 1987.
4th floor, HV1792.L57 M35 1987.
This book tells the harrowing experiences of a woman who endured almost lethal
psychological and physical travails during her married life, homesteading in
the Amazon jungle, and who finally, despite being blind and deaf, overcame the
tragedy of the death of both her husband and daughter and survived her environment
as well as her terrible isolation. The focal point of the story is the period
following her husband and daughter's deaths, when Little found the strength
and competence, despite her handicaps and ill health, to keep going until she
was rescued. But her psychological survival during 20 years of marriage to an
emotionally dominating, fanatical man is equally amazing. The book, which is
written by a filmmaker and journalist, can be read on many levels, and the life
of this extraordinarily brave women should appeal to a wide audience.
Drama
Gibson, William. The Miracle Worker: A Play for Television. New
York: Knopf, 1966. RES PS3513.I2824M5 1983. See video below.
This play is about Anne Sullivan, a teacher hired to work with Helen Keller.
Helen made a breakthrough after learning tactile sign language.
Herzog, Werner. Screenplays. New York : Tanam Press, 1980. 3rd
floor, PT2668.E774A24 1980.
Translated from German. See video below.
Land of silence and darkness. Based on the life of a blind and deaf woman.
Fiction
Greenberg, Joanne. Of Such Small Differences. New York: Holt,
1988. 3rd floor (2 copies), PS3557.R37784 O35 1988.
There is nothing unusual in the tale of an accidental meeting of two people
gradually ripening into loveunless one half of the couple is deaf and blind.
Although handicapped, the intelligent and talented John leads a full and satisfying,
if routine, life. Then he meets aspiring actress Leda. Their developing friendship
and eventual decision to live together present numerous difficulties, including
the disapproval of John's friends as well as those of Leda. Told from John's
viewpoint, Greenberg's work offers an insightful, sometimes disturbing portrait
of the physical, emotional, and mental problems faced by those who must function
in a sighted, hearing world that has not yet learned to accommodate exceptions.
Poetry
*Smithdas, Robert. City of the Heart. New York: Taplinger, 1966.
3rd floor, PS3569.M55C5.
A book of poems by a deaf-blind poet.
Videos
Biography
The Miracle Worker. Screenplay by William Gibson. Dir. Arthur
Pen. Prod. Fred Coe. Perf. Patti Duke and Anne Bancroft. MGM, 1962. 1 hr. 46
mins. B&W/Voiced/Captioned. 1st floor, 5 day collection. See drama.
Locked in a frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness since infancy,
7 year old Helen Keller has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or
expressed her innermost feelings. Then Annie Sullivan, a 20 year old teacher
from Boston arrives. Having just recently regained her own sight, the no-nonsense
Annie reaches out to Helen through the power of touch--the only tool they have
in common-- and leads her bold pupil on a miraculous journey from fear and isolation
to happiness and light.
Documentaries
Land of Silence and Darkness. Screenplay by Werner Herzog. Dir.
Werner Herzog. Perf. Fini Straubinger. 5 Minutes to Live, 2003. DVD. 85 mins.
Color/Voiced/Captioned. 1st floor, 5 day collection HV1624.S77 L35 2003. See
script.
A documentary about 56 year-old Fini, blind and deaf since her teens.
Touching Lives. Prod. Myles Gordon. Center for Independent Documentary.
Tactile Sign Language
Mesch, Johanna. Tactile Sign Language: Turn-Taking and Question in Signed
Conversations of Deaf-Blind People. Hamburg: Signum, 2001. 4th floor,
HV1598.M4713 1998.
Websites
American Association of the Deaf-Blind http://www.tr.wou.edu/dblink/aadb2.htm
Deaf Blind Vocabulary-David Bar-Tzur Interpreting Site http://www.theinterpretersfriend.com/
Unbreakable Lives-San Diego Union Tribune Story about Adam and Liz Stone from
RIT/NTID who have Usher's Syndrome. . http://www.theinterpretersfriend.com/
Other: http://wally.rit.edu/internet/subject/deafness.html#db
Guide created by
Joan Naturale 31 March 2004.
Email: JXNWML@rit.edu
Links checked 17 August 2004.
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