Great Deaf Americans
The Second Edition
Great Deaf
Americans: The Second Edition. Matthew
Scott
Moore and Robert F. Panara, '45, eds. Foreword
by Yerker
Andersson, '60. Rochester, N.Y.: Deaf Life
Press,
1996. $24.95.
Reviewed by Arlene Blumenthal Kelly
This book offers
five-page biographical sketches of 77
Deaf/deaf individuals
who have made significant
contributions
to American society. According to Yerker
Andersson, the
founding chair of the Department of Deaf
Studies at Gallaudet
University, Deaf studies scholars have
a responsibility
to ensure that compilations of our heritage
do not exclude
any groups. This concern is reflected in
Matthew S. Moore's
statement that the purpose of this
second edition
is to correct the shortcomings of the book's
first edition,
edited by Robert Panara and his son, John
Panara (1985).
The major shortcoming in the earlier
edition was
an insufficient number of minorities among the
33 profiles:
two African American men, seven women, and
no one from
other racial or ethnic backgrounds.
This second edition
includes profiles of seven African
Americans, 22
women, one Hispanic (Robert Davila), and
one person of
Asian ancestry (John T.C. Yeh). While this is
indeed an improvement
over the first edition, I despair
over the total
absence of Deaf Native Americans and over
the fact that
out of the seven African Americans profiled
here, only one
is female (Shirley J. Allen). I would have
liked to see
profiles of Dianne K. Brooks, Carolyn
McCaskill-Emerson,
and Laurene S. Gallimore, to name a
few.
The book is a
pleasure to read, however. One of its
outstanding
merits is that it is quite inclusive in terms of
membership in
the Deaf Community. Those profiled have a
great variety
of educational backgrounds, with some from
residential
schools, some from mainstreamed programs,
and others who
experienced a mixture of both. Several
profiles are
of those from totally oral backgrounds. This
inclusiveness
echoes Andersson's celebration of the book's
efforts to be
in line with the current sensitivity toward all
human groups.
Chronology dominates
the format of the book, with the
chapters arranged
by the birth years of those being
profiled. This
is helpful, but confusion results from the
chronology's
interruption by four separate thematic entries
with two or
more profiles. For example, the reader follows
the chronological
flow up to Boyce R. Williams' birth year,
1910, and then
the following chapter backtracks to 1879
and 1892, the
birth years of Cal Rodgers and Nellie Zabel
Willhite. They,
along with Rhulin Thomas (1910), are
discussed under
the thematic entry of "Three Pioneer
Aviators." The
three other thematic entries are "First Deaf
African American
Ph.D.s" (Shirley J. Allen and Glenn B.
Anderson), "Champions
of Late-Deafened Adults (Bill
Graham and Kathie
Skyer Hering), and "DPN Student
Leaders" (Jerry
Covell, Tim Rarus, Greg Hlibok, and
Bridgetta Bourne-Firl).
This year we
celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 1988
Deaf President
Now revolution, and I was disappointed
that the sketches
of each of the four student leaders are
only one page
in length. While the book does not pretend
to glorify any
specific event within the Deaf Community,
these four sketches
seem surprisingly scant, considering
the importance
of DPN. These four student leaders may be
too young to
deserve longer sketches, but the ensuing four
profiles after
the "DPN Student Leaders" section are five
pages each,
and those profiled are in the same age range
as the student
leaders.
A helpful feature
in the book is the "Selected
Bibliography."
This section offers additional materials on
each person
profiled: books, periodicals, newspaper
clippings, and
unpublished materials, including
works-in-progress,
videotapes, letters, and curricula vitae.
This is a wonderful
tool for researchers, especially Deaf
studies scholars.
However, I found
the book's lack of an index most
annoying, for
no historical book is complete without an
index. Equally
annoying is the "Honorable Mention"
section, which
is a mere listing of individuals and their
occupations.
With two exceptions, no birth or death dates
are provided,
and the section leaves the readers with the
sense that the
editors thought, "We forgot these folks, but
here are their
names anyway." Any subsequent edition of
the book should
omit this section entirely.
With the growing
proliferation of Deaf studies in American
secondary schools,
colleges, and universities, this book is
a welcome addition
to the bookshelf of every scholar of
Deaf history.
It should be up there along with Jack
Gannon's Deaf
Heritage: A Narrative History of Deaf
America (1981),
John Van Cleve and Barry Crouch's A
Place of Their
Own: Creating the Deaf Community in
America (1989),
and Jane Maher's Seeing Language in
Sign: The Work
of William C. Stokoe (1996), among other
works that focus
on Deaf America.
Arlene Blumenthal
Kelly, '77, G-'92, a professor of Deaf
studies at Gallaudet,
enjoys books on Deaf-related subjects
such as culture/community
and language. She also devours
books on ethnography
and women's studies as part of her
doctoral program
in American studies at the University of
Maryland, College
Park.
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