Mark Drolsbaugh Deaf Again Analysis

The book “A Journey into the Deaf-World”, by Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister, and Ben Bahan, is about the different people who are considered deaf: hard-of-hearing, deaf, and CODA. People who are hard-of-hearing are people who don 't hear well; people who are deaf lack the power of hearing since birth; you can be born hearing and throughout time lose some or all of your hearing sense. People who are CODA (children of deaf adults) are often signing because their parents are deaf and CODA’s often are helpful by being interpreters. CODAs become a great link between their parents and the hearing world. This book explains about deaf culture and how sign is a visual and manual way of conversing. The benefits of sign language are many and the ASL “foreign language” is growing among hearing as well. About more than 500,000 people sign in America alone. ASL is dated from 1779, but probably even earlier. Sign language promotes cultural awareness; deaf culture uses sign language as their main form of communicating.

His senior year of high school he applies to only two major colleges; Purdue University and Rochester Institute of Technology, he was accepted into both. He and his grandfather had dreams of him going to Purdue and playing on their wrestling team; he didn’t think he’d get in. RIT was out of the question but with his mother’s encouragement he applied as well. While at his first year at Purdue, he struggled. He only knew how to read lips, and the large fast pace classrooms were too much to handle. Although he had an interpreter in all his classes, it was useless. He barely knew any sign language and his grades were affected by his inability to comprehend what the professors where saying. Eventually he was kicked off the wrestling team due to his grades. This scene in the movie made me realize that Deaf people could not only read lips, but they should all learn how to sign as well. Sign Language is a universal method of communication between Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Hearing people.

After this discovery, Mark's grandfather took him to all kinds of doctors trying to find a solution to his hearing loss; a solution that would never come. The doctors told the family, including Mark's deaf parents, not to use ASL in his presence and they would try to force him to hear. He went through all sorts of surgeries where the doctors tried to put tubes in his ears and he was also fitted with all different kinds of hearing aides. None of these solutions were the right ones because Mark still wasn't able to hear. Mark was always forced into situations where everyone would be talking in group conversations and having a good, old time while he just sat there pretending like he knew what was going on. For half of his life, this kind of thing happened constantly where Mark would have to act like something he is not.

Deaf Again is an autobiography written by Mark Drolsbaugh. In this book he begins at his birth, goes on to explain what it was like to lose his hearing, and details how this impacted and affected his life. Around the time Mark was in first grade, he began to realize that he was losing his hearing when he began having difficulty hearing some of his fellow students. His hearing continued to deteriorate until he was left completely deaf. This was very tough for Mark, because even though his parents were both deaf, they encouraged him to do his best to continue to be a hearing person. His parents believed that he would be happiest if he could fit in with all the hearing people, but didn’t understand that he could not truly be himself if he was

Bob Hiltermann is a famous deaf storyteller, actor, comic, and musician. He was born in Wiesbaden, Germany and became deaf at the age of four due to spinal meningitis. His family assumed that he was slow and it wasn’t until he was ten years old that they finally realized he was deaf. When Bob turned eighteen, he attended Gallaudet University. While attending Gallaudet he learned American Sign Language, which would eventually lead him to become a confident and successful signer. Bob grew up in a family of classical musicians and this shaped his love for music. Despite being deaf he has become an accomplished musician himself and is the drummer for a famous all deaf band named Beethoven’s Nightmare. He has also experienced a very successful career as an actor and has starred in many award winning documentary films, TV, stage productions, soaps, and feature films. Bob has also helped create and star in an educational sign language series called “Shut up and Sign” (Hiltermann, 2016).

Mark Drolsbaugh presentation titled “Madness in the Mainstream” encompassed Deaf education and challenges Deaf children face with mainstream education. Drolsbaugh was born hearing and as he grew up, he had progressive hearing loss and became Deaf by college. Luckily for him, he was born into a Deaf family. Drolsbaugh went on to Graduate from Gallaudet and wrote for different deaf newspapers and publications and became a school counselor. He had written four books by 2014 pertaining to the Deaf community. Madness in the Mainstream was actually his fourth book and was the basis to this presentation.

The book also describes how life has changed for deaf adults through the years. Previously, many deaf adults were not able to get jobs in many places, because there were not many places that were accepting to them. These days, however, almost every business or company is looking for those that are fluent in American Sign Language, due to the simple fact that they would be able to accommodate that many more people and earn more money for their business. Also, there were not many outlets for deaf adults to use in relation to entertainment or basic needs, because again, mostly everything was catered to hearing adults only. However, they have recently developed many different ways for the deaf to communicate with the hearing and with one another, including TTY, full-keyboard, and internet phones and closed-captions on television stations and movies.

First, this book allowed me to see the negative way in which deaf people were perceived. This book is not old by any means, and I was taken aback by the way deaf children were perceived by not only others in the community, but often times by their own parents as well. The term

After reading Deaf Again I learned a lot of new things about Deaf culture and was drawn in by the story of Mark Drolsbaugh. "The hardest fight a man has to fight is to live in a world where every single day someone is trying to make you someone you do not want to be" e.e cummings. I was brought into the book immediately from this quote and realized how difficult it must have been for Mark to find his identity. He was trying to hang on to his hearing in fear of going deaf as if there was something wrong or not proper with being deaf. It took him a long time, twenty-three years to realize that the Deaf culture is receiving and it was there for him to embrace the entire time. It would be difficult to be able to hear and then slowly

In Mark Drolsbaugh’s educational and witty autobiography “Deaf Again”, he describes his journey as a child born to deaf parents, losing his own hearing in his childhood, and navigating both hearing and deaf worlds while trying to discover his identity.

In the Deaf community Benjamin Bahan is considered an influential figure because not only does he write about Deaf culture but he is a storyteller as well. Bahan has published at least twenty-eight articles, five books, and eight videotapes. With Dirksen Bauman and Melissa Malzkuhn they created the world’s first online journal called, Deaf Studies Digital Journal. It is a “peer-reviewed academic and cultural arts journal to feature scholarship and creative work in both signed and written languages” (Gallaudet Press). Because he is a storyteller he appears in chapter two of “Signing the Body Poetics”. In this chapter he talks about the Face-to-Face tradition in the American

     Born hearing to deaf, signing parents, Mark gradually lost his hearing. Despite the fact that his deaf parents preferred sign communication, Mark was raised and educated without the use of sign language. His parents and grandparents were concerned that sign might interfere with speech and restrict his educational achievement. Although Mark became increasingly hard-of-hearing, he worked hard to "pass" as a hearing person. This ambition, he later discovered, actually constricted his development and limited the depth of relationships with family and friends. During these long years, he just "didn?t know what (he) was missing." When he later learned ASL, chose to mix with deaf people, and learned to

The book A Loss for Words by Lou Ann Walker is a biography about Lou Ann. Her parents are deaf and she and her sister are hearing. The book describes the troubles and embarrassment she felt and had while growing up. She loved her parents dearly but often felt embarrassed, or infuriated about comments people would make to her about her parents. Lou Ann exclaims that “their world is deaf, their deaf culture, their deaf friends, and their own sign language it is something separate, something I can never really know, but I am intimate with.”(2) Lou Ann was both speaking and she could also sign. She felt it hard to fit into one culture. She had a love for her parents and the

The documentary Deaf Jam produced by New Day Films provided an in-depth look into the beauty and dexterity of American Sign Language (ASL) while highlighting many important aspects of deaf culture. It also gave an even deeper analysis of the personal lives of those who are deaf and the societal and emotional struggles they face every day. This was done through the eyes of an Israeli immigrant named Aneta Brodski and her empowering journey to share her story through signed slam poetry.

Mark Drolsbaugh’s Deaf Again book gives a detailed account of his experience with becoming deaf in both a hearing and deaf world. It includes the awkwardness and un-comfortability he felt in hearing environments, within is personal family dynamic and in deaf safe havens where he learned to adjust, and grow for the betterment of him learning ASL and in general, becoming emerged within Deaf culture. Drolsbaugh starts the book off by introducing how life for deaf people, even when giving birth, can be a struggle (due to society not being well informed on how to effectively communicate and treat Deaf individuals). Drolsbaugh’s mother, Sherry, wasn’t properly given epidural while giving birth to him, and as she made noises to best express that something was wrong, the nurse brushed it off. Once Mark was born, and Sherry got up the needle wasn’t in her back but on the bed. Looking at how communication issues can lead to negative results, throughout the rest of the book Drolsbaugh sheds light on this phenomenon, specifically focusing on the educational environment and the interactions between and among hearing and deaf communities.