Deaf In America Summary

The book I chose to read was the book Deaf in America by Carol Padden and Tom Humphries. I chose this book because I know several people that are deaf and wanted to learn more about the Deaf culture. A family friend of mine comes from a Deaf family, and I was interested in learning more about what exactly that meant. At first, I expected this book to be about certain people that were deaf and their specific experiences. However, I was surprised to learn more about the Deaf community as a society, with deaf people sharing a similar culture just like hearing people. The book begins by outlining the author’s back stories. Carol was born deaf in a Deaf community while Tom became deaf when he was a child and didn’t meet other Deaf people until

Many Deaf people do have a concept of sound and understand how it affects daily life. Several Deaf actors use signals and gestures to demonstrate sounds, such as a helicopter being represented through certain hand movements. Also, many deaf people can recognize that natural laughter may not sound “normal” to hearing people and can alter their voices to create controlled laughter. The author tells a joke often told in the Deaf community where a Deaf couple goes into a hotel. The man goes out to the car to get some medicine for his wife. While outside, he forgets what room is his so he blares the car alarm. All of the lights in the hotel turned on except for the room his wife was

For example, I learned more about how the Deaf community works. The Deaf community shares a culture with one another and someone can be born into the Deaf community or join it later in their life, as seen with the authors. Along with the culture, there is a history that can be seen with specific communities. There is a French tale that describes the start of Sign Language in their community. I also learned that Sign Language is a language separate from spoken language. It has its own morphology and does not follow the same grammar rules set in the English language. I found this very interesting because before I read this book, I figured that Sign Language was English spoken through gestures. However, it can be very different than English through grammatical structures and is a separate language. Now that I know more about the Deaf community, I can better understand the culture shared by some of my Deaf friends. I am majoring in Public Relations, so understanding other cultures is very important to me. Someday, I will help a company represent itself to the public, and learning more about other cultures helps me to avoid ignorance and better understand the culture of certain communities. I can translate my knowledge of the Deaf community in my career to represent the Deaf in companies and be able to serve them better through Public