“Mother father deaf” is the phrase commonly used within the Deaf community to refer to hearing children of deaf parents. These children grow up between two cultures, the Hearing and the Deaf, forever balancing the worlds of sound and silence. Paul Preston, one of these children, takes us to the place where Deaf and Hearing cultures meet, where families like his own embody the conflicts and resolutions of two often opposing world views. Based on 150 interviews with adult hearing children of deaf parents throughout the United States, Mother Father Deaf examines the process of assimilation and cultural affiliation among a population whose lives incorporate the paradox of being culturally “Deaf” yet functionally hearing. It is rich in anecdote and analysis, remarkable for its insights into a family life normally closed to outsiders.

The 14th volume in the Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities series explores the rich linguistic and cultural characteristics of hearing members of deaf families.

"Hearing, Mother Father Deaf: Hearing People in Deaf Families includes a comprehensive description of the societal influences at work in the lives of deaf people and their hearing children, which serves as a backdrop for the essays. The topics range from bimodal bilingualism in adults to cultural and linguistic behaviors of hearing children from deaf families; sign and spoken language contact phenomena to issues of self-expression, identity, and experience. A blend of data-based research and personal writings, the articles in this sociolinguistic study provide a thorough understanding of the varied experiences of hearing people and their deaf families throughout the world"--Page 4 of cover.

The son of deaf parents, Paul Preston uses the stories of others like him to describe how exposure to the "deaf culture" within the "hearing culture" shapes lives. He has written this book "as much as possible in the Deaf way", interweaving fragments of his informants' stories and using repetition for emphasis.

By turns heart-tugging and hilarious, Myron Uhlberg’s memoir tells the story of growing up as the hearing son of deaf parents—and his life in a world that he found unaccountably beautiful, even as he longed to escape it. “Does sound have rhythm?” my father asked. “Does it rise and fall like the ocean? Does it come and go like the wind?” Such were the kinds of questions that Myron Uhlberg’s deaf father asked him from earliest childhood, in his eternal quest to decipher, and to understand, the elusive nature of sound. Quite a challenge for a young boy, and one of many he would face. Uhlberg’s first language was American Sign Language, the first sign he learned: “I love you.” But his second language was spoken English—and no sooner did he learn it than he was called upon to act as his father’s ears and mouth in the stores and streets of the neighborhood beyond their silent apartment in Brooklyn. Resentful as he sometimes was of the heavy burdens heaped on his small shoulders, he nonetheless adored his parents, who passed on to him their own passionate engagement with life. These two remarkable people married and had children at the absolute bottom of the Great Depression—an expression of extraordinary optimism, and typical of the joy and resilience they were able to summon at even the darkest of times. From the beaches of Coney Island to Ebbets Field, where he watches his father’s hero Jackie Robinson play ball, from the branch library above the local Chinese restaurant where the odor of chow mein rose from the pages of the books he devoured to the hospital ward where he visits his polio-afflicted friend, this is a memoir filled with stories about growing up not just as the child of two deaf people but as a book-loving, mischief-making, tree-climbing kid during the remarkably eventful period that spanned the Depression, the War, and the early fifties. From the Hardcover edition.

The parents of a child born without hearing describe their efforts to reach across the barrier of silence to teach their daughter to speak and enjoy a normal life.

Come with me on a journey into my past that is beyond the experience of most individuals.Glimpse the wonder of living in two worlds, the Deaf World of perpetual silence, and the Hearing World of perpetual sounds. Meet my Deaf parents and their Deaf friends whose lives testify to courageous living as they find their way in the Hearing World. Be amazed at my unique CODA experiences that explain why my Deaf friends affectionately christened me "Half-Hearing and Half-Deaf."Expand your worldview as you witness incredible events that, in turn, amuse and astound, impress and inform, disturb and displease.Be forewarned that this journey may leave its mark. It did so for me. As someone who has lived in both the Hearing World and the Deaf World, I still learned a great deal and smiled all the way through this wonderful memoire. Whether or not you know anything about deafness or deaf people, I recommend you read this story. You will be very glad you did. -I. King Jordan, President Emeritus, Gallaudet University Ruth A. Reppert taught in the Illinois public schools for twenty-four years and then began a career in deafness as a nationally certified sign language interpreter, sign language instructor, and the assistant director of the Deaf Service Center of Broward County, Florida. In that role, she established the Community Education of Deafness program at Nova Southeastern University and the first state-approved continuing education course for nurses, Serving Deaf Patients. Ruth lives in Vero Beach, Florida with her husband, Bob, enjoying the sun and the surf."

Like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, this is a fascinating voyage into a strange and wonderful land, a provocative meditation on communication, biology, adaptation, and culture. In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect — a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well. Seeing Voices is, as Studs Terkel has written, "an exquisite, as well as revelatory, work."

Brown is the oldest of three hearing daughters born to deaf, working-class African American parents. Both parents were born in the South and attended segregated schools for "colored" deaf and blind children; later they settled in Washington, DC. Brown tells stories of her parents' youth, their tenacious work ethic, their incredible pride of family, their interactions with the deaf African American and white communities, and the suffering they endured living in a hearing world. Brown also relates her own experiences as her parents' interpreter, and how she learned to live in both the deaf and hearing worlds.