Deaf Literature Sampler: War
Asterik * indicates a D/deaf
author. 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 and war 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 Deaf Index. Go to the Deaf Studies databases and explore. http://wally.rit.edu/electronic/topic/deafstudies.html
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.
Also, The Tactile Mind is a literary print publication for the signing
community. http://www.thetactilemind.com/.
We have this publication on the CMS and in bound periodical format (back
issues). 2nd floor PER PS508.D43T335. 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=-
The Holocaust and World
War II/War Experiences--See extensive guide http://wally.rit.edu/pubs/guides/deafwartestimonies.htm
War-Genral
Fiction or Historical
Fiction
Bierce, Ambrose. "Chickamauga". In the Midst of Life.
London: Chatto and Windus, 1964. 3rd floor, PS1097 I5 1964.
Short story in which the deaf character (boy) is used as a foil to emphasize
the brutality and grotesqueness of war. The boy's deafness is not revealed until
the end.
Faulkner, William. The
Mansion. New York: Random House, 1959. 3rd floor, PS3511.A86M28.
Sympathetically portrayed character, Linda Snopes Kohl, is deafened in her 20s
by an explosion during the Spanish Civil War. Her deafness serves to isolate
her from time and change.
Hemingway, Ernest. For
Whom the Bell Tolls. New York: Scribner, 1996. 3rd floor, PS3515.E37
F6 1996.
In 1934, during the
Spanish Civil War, bands of guerillas roam the Spanish countryside trying to
save the 'Republic' from ruin. One of the most courageous is a deaf 'bandito'
and spy named El Sordo. The men in his band believe he gets his courage from
not being able to hear the danger around him. El Sordo is popular with everyone,
even with enemies. He lipreads the enemy bands' secrets and uses this secret
information against them, but they suspect little for he never speaks and willingly
brings them stolen whiskey and guns. (Rosen, 1993).
Itani, Frances. Deafening.
New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2003. 3rd floor and 14 day books, PR9199.3I83
D43 2003.
War and deafness are the twin themes of this psychologically rich, impeccably
crafted debut novel set during WWI. Born in the late 19th century, Grania O'Neill
comes from solid middle-class stock, her father a hotel owner in Deseronto,
Ontario, her mother a God-fearing daughter of an Irish immigrant. When Grania
is five, she loses her hearing to scarlet fever. When she is nine, she is sent
to the Ontario Institution for the Deaf and Dumb in Belleville and given an
education not only in lipreading, signing and speaking but also in emotional
self-sufficiency. After graduating, she works as a nurse in the Belleville hospital,
where she meets and falls in love with Jim Lloyd. They marry, but Jim is bound
for the war as a stretcher bearer. His war is hell on earth: lurid wounds; stinks;
sudden, endless slaughter redeemed only by comradeship. Itani's remarkably vivid,
unflinching descriptions of his ordeal tend to overshadow Grania's musings on
the home front, but Grania's story comes to the fore again when her brother-in-law
and childhood friend, Kenan, comes back to Deseronto from the trenches in Europe
with a dead arm and a half-smashed face, refusing to speak. Grania, who was
educated to configure sounds she couldn't hear into words that "the hearing"
could understand, brings Kenan back to life by teaching him sounds again, and
then by making portraits of the people in the town whom she, Kenan and her sister
Tress know in common. As she talks to Kenan, she reinvigorates him with a sense
that his life, having had such a rich past, must have a future, too. This subplot
eloquently expresses Itani's evident, pervasive faith in the unexpected power
of story to not only represent life but to enact itself within lives. Her wonderfully
felt novel is a timely reminder of war's cost, told from an unexpected perspective.
Websites:
World Around You-Deaf People
Trapped in Hitler’s Holocaust http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/worldaroundyou/holocaust/index.html
Holocaust Guide
from Gallaudet University Library http://library.gallaudet.edu/dr/faq-holocaust.html
World Around You
–World War II Glimpse of Deaf Lives http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/worldaroundyou/WWII/index.html
Deaf and Civil
War http://library.gallaudet.edu/dr/faq-us-civil-war.html
Guide created by
Joan Naturale 31 March 2004.
Email: JXNWML@rit.edu
Links checked 17 August 2004.
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