Special Collections

Eyes of Desire

In a collection of essays, deaf lesbians and gay men discuss their lives, describing how they discovered their sexual identity, overcame barriers to communication in a hearing world, and created a deaf gay and lesbian culture.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Singing Hands

As one of three hearing daughters of deaf parents, 12-year-old Gussie Davis is expected to be a proper representative of Saint Jude's Church for the Deaf in Birmingham, Alabama, which is run by her father. So when Gussie starts to hum through signed services in the summer of 1948, Reverend Davis assumes she merely wants to sing out loud and sends her to a regular church downtown. But Gussie's behavior worsens, and she is not allowed to go on a much-anticipated trip; instead, she must help her father at the Alabama School for the Deaf.

Rebelling against the strict rules of the school, Gussie finally confronts the difficulties and prejudices encountered by the deaf community, all while still trying to find her own identity in the worlds of both the hearing and the deaf.

Drawing on firsthand accounts of her mother's own childhood with deaf parents, Delia Ray provides an inside look at the South in the 1940s. Lively humor, unforgettable characters, and meticulous research combine to make this a standout novel that offers keen insight into what it means to be hearing in a deaf world.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Anything But Silent

This book is a compilation of the most thought-provoking articles by deaf writer Mark Drolsbaugh. With a blend of humor and insight Drolsbaugh tackles some of the most profound topics in deafness deafhearing relationships the rift between American Sign Language and English the hidden world of the hard of hearing oppression in politics and education idiosyncrasies of the deaf and hearing and may others. Anything But Silent offers a deaf perspective that will bring knowing smiles to those familiar with the deaf community and enlightenment to those who are new to it.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Spider's Web

In the spring of 666 A.D., Sister Fidelma is summoned to the small Irish village of Araglin. An advocate of the Brehon law courts as well as a religieuse, she is to investigate the murder of the local chieftain. While traveling there with her friend Brother Eadulf, a band of brigands attacks the roadside hostel in which they are staying and attempts to burn them out. While Fidelma and Eadulf manage to beat back their attackers, this incident is only the first in a series that troubles them. When they arrive at Araglin, they find out that the chieftain was murdered in the middle of the night, and next to his body, a local deaf-mute man was found holding the bloody knife that killed him.
While everyone else seems convinced that the man's guilt is obvious, sister Fidelma is not so sure. As she investigates, she's convinced that there is something happening in the seemingly quiet town--something that everyone is trying very hard to keep from her. In what may be the most challenging and confusing situation that she has yet faced, Fidelma must somehow uncover the truth behind the chieftain's murderer and find out what is really going on beneath the quiet surface of this rural town.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Talking Hands

Imagine a village where everyone "speaks" sign language. Just such a village - an isolated Bedouin community in Israel with an unusually high rate of deafness - is at the heart of Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind. There, an indigenous sign language has sprung up, used by deaf and hearing villagers alike. It is a language no outsider has been able to decode, until now.

A New York Times reporter trained as a linguist, Margalit Fox is the only Western journalist to have set foot in this remarkable village. In Talking Hands, she follows an international team of scientists that is unraveling this mysterious language.

Because the sign language of the village has arisen completely on its own, outside the influence of any other language, it is a living demonstration of the "language instinct," man's inborn capacity to create language. If the researchers can decode this language, they will have helped isolate ingredients essential to all human language, signed and spoken. But as Talking Hands grippingly shows, their work in the village is also a race against time, because the unique language of the village may already be endangered.

Talking Hands offers a fascinating introduction to the signed languages of the world- languages as beautiful, vital and emphatically human as any other- explaining why they are now furnishing cognitive scientists with long-sought keys to understanding how language works...

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Moses Goes to the Circus

Experience the Big Apple's Circus of the Senses Moses and his family are going to the circus. Not just any circus but the Big Apple's Circus of the Senses! In a single ring, there are acts by trapeze artists, acrobats, elephants, horses, and clowns - all specially designed for the deaf and hard-of-hearing and the blind. Moses's little sister, Renee, isn't deaf but is learning sign language, and Moses loves teaching her the signs for their day at the circus.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Winning Sounds Like This

The Gallaudet women's basketball team has just defeated the number one ranked team in the country, the College of New Jersey. A reporter, not wanting to be insensitive, delicately broaches the obvious question: "How can you play so well despite your hearing impairment?" Nanette Virnig, a forward for Gallaudet, puts him at ease. "We're not hearing impaired," she says. "We're deaf." Winning Sounds Like This is the remarkable story of the nation's most unique and inspiring women's basketball team and its 1999-2000 season. It is a touching chronicle of players who don't hear buzzers or cheers, a coach who has never used a whistle, and a university that is a mecca for deaf culture throughout the world. Author Wayne Coffey offers an intimate and unsparing look at the players' lives on and off the court, their struggles to overcome the mistreatment and misconceptions of the hearing world, and their deeply rooted connection to one another. Interwoven with an overview of the shameful history of education for the deaf, Coffey explores the players' hopes and dreams and introduces us to such unforgettable people as Ronda Jo Miller, a Minnesota farm girl who is the most decorated athlete in school history; Touria Ouahid, a point guard from Morocco who had to overcome the fierce objections of her Muslim culture to pursue basketball and her education; and their relentlessly dedicated coach, Kitty Baldridge, who has led the Gallaudet women's team for nearly twenty-five years. On the bench for every game, on the bus for every trip, even living in the dorms and attending classes, Coffey presents sensitively crafted portraits of ten remarkable women who adamantly reject the notion that they are disabled in any way. Their goal in life is not to be able to hear, but simply to be accepted and respected. Nearly fifteen years ago, I. King Jordan, Gallaudet's president and a towering figure in contemporary deaf history, issued a famous quote: "Deaf people can do everything but hear." Much more than just a basketball story, Winning Sounds Like This is a celebration of community, of perseverance, and of young women who live out King Jordan's words every day of their lives.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Printer

A young boy tells the story of his deaf father who loved working as a printer for a major newspaper but was saddened by the fact that his hearing coworkers ignored him because he couldn't talk. Picture descriptions added.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Christmas Miracles

At Christmas, our hearts are touched by reports of wondrous occurrences that make us stop, reflect, and hope. This luminous book shares true accounts of Christmas miracles-- inspiring events that happened to real people at Christmas time, including:

A Christmas Mystery: A deaf boy's generosity is miraculously rewarded

First Christmas: Newlyweds take part in the local Christmas pageant -- and receive a surprising lesson in timeless love

My Christmas Angel: A pro baseball player visits a children's ward to cheer the patients, and is himself transformed

A Heart for Christmas: A series of coincidences brings new life to a little girl

The Stranger: A gentle, mysterious Christmas Eve visitor awes a family

Christmas Saved My Mother: A rabbi tells how his mother, fleeing the Holocaust, was spared on Christmas Eve

George Misses a Shift: Sudden car trouble on Christmas night saves a couple's life... and more.

Albert Einstein said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is." If you believe in miracles -- or want to -- let Christmas Miracles light the candle of hope in your heart this year.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Deaf in Japan

Until the mid-1970s, deaf people in Japan had few legal rights and little social recognition. Legally, they were classified as minors or mentally deficient, unable to obtain driver's licenses or sign contracts and wills.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Mesa Conspiracy

David Kent unlocked the files of Department Thirty in his electrifying debut novel, "a thrill-a-minute ride" (Mystery Scene). Now he returns to the elusive government agency that erases criminal identities in exchange for lethal secrets -- in a heart-pounding new thriller. Raised by his tough but loving distant cousin Colleen, Eric Anthony never cared or asked what became of the parents who abandoned him early in life. But now Colleen is dying, and Eric, single dad to his young deaf son, is left with a mind-boggling mystery revealed in Colleen's last breaths: a cryptic directive from the man who was his father. Piecing together his shadowed past begins in the dust of Oklahoma's rugged terrain -- and leads to Department Thirty, where U.S. Marshal Faith Kelly chases the mastermind behind a wave of domestic terror. The nexus where their solo quests meet will have explosive implications for them both -- and will place many more than just themselves in grave danger.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor of the Telephone

A readable, interesting biography of the famous inventor, paying equal attention to his scientific achievements, his personal life, and his lifelong work with the deaf. There are several odd omissions, though, including why Bell adopted the middle name Graham; the spilled-acid aspect of the first telephone message and Bell's demonstration of the telephone before Queen Victoria.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Lanceheim

A fast-paced literary and psychological drama in which the trials and tribulations of a group of stuffed animals illuminate the moral and philosophical dilemmas we all share

While finishing what was to be his greatest symphony, famed composer Reuben Walrus discovers he is going deaf. Desperate to stave off the encroaching silence, he embarks on an odyssey to find a fabled creature named Maximilian, rumored to have healing powers but only traceable via an underground network. But as Reuben gets closer to the truth, he must ask himself: Just who-or what-is Maximilian?

The story of the legendary creature is recorded by Wolf Diaz, Maximilian's oldest friend and most loyal follower. Oddly, unlike the other stuffed animals of Mollisan Town, Maximilian did not arrive by green delivery truck. He cannot be identified as any particular species and is made from a material unlike any other with almost invisible seams. And most puzzling, he grows in size. As Maximilian matures, he begins to preach odd parables, attracting a legion of followers hoping to learn from his teachings. But his believers aren't the only stuffed animals paying attention as his growing influence threatens the power of the darker forces currently ruling Mollisan Town. Now Maximilian is in hiding . . . and time is running out for Reuben to find him. As his search widens, the composer encounters a detective mouse, a giraffe who swears Maximilian miraculously cured his stomach cancer, and a mink who may hold the key to Reuben's salvation. But it's a race against time as Reuben's world steadily goes silent, and his desperation may ultimately lead to his undoing.

With biting prose and compelling plot twists, Lanceheim is a tour de force all the way to the last sentence, as the true natures of Wolf Diaz, Reuben Walrus, and Maximilian are uncovered. Through the stuffed animals living in the imaginative world he introduced in the critically acclaimed Amberville, Tim Davys explores the hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses, that define humanity as he pens a story that is both gripping and extraordinary.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Once In Every Life

Tess Gregorys brilliant career as a research scientist hides her longings for a husband and child. Though deaf, she is a free spirit-a woman full of life and love. She is struck down all too soon. But for Tess, a new life begins at her death, in post-Civil War America. She is now Amarylis Rafferty, wife and mother of three-and she can hear. Shocked and disoriented by her new surroundings, she is drawn into the savage heartache burdening the family, especially her husband, Jack. Pioneer living is rough for a woman used to modern conveniences, but Tess flourishes, bringing happiness and hope to her daughters and her son-to all except her husband, a man haunted by angry, violent voices that give no rest to his bitter soul. A man who fears himself capable of anything. But Tess's faith is unshakable. Sheer determination will drive her as their hearts become entwined in a fierce struggle that can be tamed only by love itself....

Date Added: 03/08/2018

A Silent Terror

Revisit this tale of danger and intrigue from Lynette Eason

When Marianna Santino's roommate is killed, Detective Ethan O'Hara can't fathom the motive. Then he realizes the deaf teacher was the intended target. Marianna must have something the murderer desperately wants. But what? Digging for the truth, the guarded cop tries to learn everything he can about Marianna. Her world. Her family. Her beauty, faith and fierce independence. In spite of himself, Ethan finds that he can't keep his feelings at bay. Soon, he's willing to risk everything--including his heart--to lay the silent terror stalking Marianna to rest.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Sociolinguistic Variation in American Sign Language

This volume provides a complete description of ASL variation. People from varying regions and backgrounds have different ways of saying the same thing. For example, in English some people say "test," while others say "tes'," dropping the final "t. " Noted scholars Ceil Lucas, Robert Bayley, and Clayton Valli led a team of exceptional researchers in applying techniques for analyzing spoken language variation to ASL. Their observations at the phonological, lexical, morphological, and syntactic levels demonstrate that ASL variation correlates with many of the same driving social factors of spoken languages, including age, socioeconomic class, gender, ethnic background, region, and sexual orientation. Internal constraints that mandate variant choices for spoken languages have been compared to ASL as well, with intriguing results.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Silent Melody

From the legendary New York Times bestselling author of Heartless comes an exquisite Georgian romance of a transcendent love, "without doubt, one of the most romantic novels ever written."*Lady Emily Marlowe is beautiful, independent, and unspoiled. Deaf since childhood, she appreciates her family's efforts to nurture her spirit, but the man they've chosen for her betrothal can never fulfill her. The only one Emily has ever desired is bold and reckless Lord Ashley Kendrick. Her childhood amour inspired her fantasies and vowed never to forget her--even as he left her for a new life in India and a new love.Seven years and countless dreams later, Ashley has returned a desolate widower to Bowden Abbey and, true to his promise, to Emily. Yet his heedless proposal of marriage has left her unexpectedly conflicted. Though the heat of passion still burns, Emily fears that it's only a sense of duty--not love--that has brought him to bended knee. And what is she to make of those seven lost years clouded in secrets too dark for Ashley to share?For Emily, her greatest and only love now becomes one worth fighting for, one of startling revelations and second chances, and one, like a melody, too beautiful for words....

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Dead Body Language

Thirty-seven year old journalist, Connor Westphal, has relocated from San Francisco to Flat Skunk, a mining-turned-tourist town in the foothills of the Sierras, to start up her own weekly paper. Suddenly, dead bodies begin turning up in the most unusual places, setting Connor on a hunt for a killer. You might say Connor has a sixth sense when it comes to investigating...but she only has four of the usual five senses. Connor Westphal is deaf. But being hearing impaired doesn't stop Connor from pursuing the murderer. Without sound to distract her, she attends to subtleties that others overlook and ultimately unravels the mystery.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Hands of My Father

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.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Girl in the Shadows

Some secrets survive the light of day, others should stay lost in darkness forever—the family saga that began with April Shadows continues!April Taylor wasn't a little girl anymore—but who was she really? The home she shared with her parents and her older sister, Brenda, may have been filled with turmoil, but it was the only home she knew. Now, with nowhere to go in the wake of losing her mother and father, April had to grow up fast as she embarked on an odyssey of heartbreak and betrayal. It was mere chance that led her to the secluded home of a kindly elderly woman and her deaf teenaged granddaughter, Echo. There, April found a shelter from her mixed-up life, and from the confusion that severed her relationship with Brenda, after an encounter with Brenda's girlfriend, Celia. But when a dangerous couple arrives with greedy intentions, April discovers they will take advantage of her very special friendship with Echo to get what they want. Now, April's survival depends on being true to the one person she's never fully accepted: herself.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Cosmic Healing

With the onset of sudden profound deafness at the age of 29, Barbara Brodsky set out on a quest to understand the nature of illness and healing, examining the interrelationship of mind and body and our capacity to transcend limitation. Asking the questions What is healing? Who and what heals? Why do some people heal while others do not? she discusses karma and free will, our habit of identifying with a limited sense of self, and our potential for greater healing.

A longtime Buddhist practitioner who began meditation in the '60s, Brodsky discovered a new path on her healing journey when she began channeling the spirit Aaron in 1989. Based on three decades of meticulously kept journals, Cosmic Healing weaves together Brodsky's Buddhist teachings, channeled material from Aaron, exercises for the reader, and an account of her experiences with the healer known as John of God (João Teixeira de Faria) at his teaching center, Casa de Dom Inácio, in Brazil. While Cosmic Healing is channeled in part and has deep roots in traditional dharma, it is at heart a universal story of human growth and discovery. Old beliefs limit us every day. But as Brodsky discovered and teaches, we can learn to recognize such limiting beliefs, transcend them, and live a deeper truth.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

A Man without Words

A Man without Words vividly conveys the challenge, the frustrations, and the exhilaration of opening the mind of a congenitally deaf person to the concept of language.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Once in a Lifetime

Millions adored Daphne Fields, for she shared their passion, their pain, their joy, and their sorrow. But America's most popular novelist remained a closed book to the world -- guarding her life with a fierce privacy no reporter could crack.

Her life hides a myriad of secrets. The husband and daughter she lost in a fire. The son who barely survived it and would be deaf forever. The victories, the defeats, the challenges of facing life as a woman alone and helping her son meet the challenges of his handicap. A strong woman, she would not accept defeat, or help from anyone... until she found she could no longer face it alone.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Secret Signs

In the mid-1800s, a boy and his mother help support themselves by making panoramic eggs of maple sugar. The boy, Luke, who is deaf, paints pictures that fit neatly inside the eggs. When a man bursts into their home and accuses them of hiding slaves, Luke's mother can honestly deny the charge. But she is that very day planning to meet their contact on the Underground Railroad to pass along information regarding the next "safe haven." Luke's mother is held at home, but the boy is courageous and resourceful in using his creative talents to help make the connection.

Date Added: 03/08/2018

Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language

From the seventeenth century to the early years of the twentieth, the population of Martha's Vineyard manifested an extremely high rate of profound hereditary deafness.

In stark contrast to the experience of most deaf people in our own society, the Vineyarders who were born deaf were so thoroughly integrated into the daily life of the community that they were not seen-- and did not see themselves-- as handicapped or as a group apart. Deaf people were included in all aspects of life, such as town politics, jobs, church affairs, and social life.

How was this possible? On the Vineyard, hearing and deaf islanders alike grew up speaking sign language. This unique sociolinguistic adaptation meant that the usual barriers to communication between the hearing and the deaf, which so isolate many deaf people today, did not exist.

Date Added: 03/08/2018