Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education Advance Access originally published online on March 23, 2006
The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2006 11(3):389; doi:10.1093/deafed/enj036
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A Hearing Father's Journey into the Deaf World
Centre for Deaf Studies, University of the Witwatersrand
R. Medugno. (2005). Deaf Daughter, Hearing Father. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. 144 pages. Paperback.
The book is written with the aim of being an "easily digestible" account of Medugno's personal experiences as a hearing father of a deaf daughter in order to assist in preparing other parents for the journey that lies ahead of them. Medugno and his family have chosen the manual method of communication with their deaf daughter, and this impacts very strongly on everything he shares with the reader.
The aim of sharing personal experiences is indeed met, and the author's honesty is both a strength of the book and a weakness. Sharing his total devastation and frequent tears at learning of his daughter's deafness and coming to terms with it over the next few years was powerful, as it is something all parents of deaf and hard-of-hearing children will need to deal with. Medugno's joys as a parent, his struggles to learn a new language, and deal with deaf–hearing sibling rivalry along with the challenges of including a deaf child into a hearing world (both in terms of family and broader community) provided a great insight into this unique family dynamic. Medugno's appendix of games and activities at the end of the book is a lovely resource to parents, and his list of resources are helpful, though limited.
At times, this personal journey meandered off into more biographical issues of Medugno himself, with many issues unrelated to his daughter and seemingly superfluous for the reader. The fine line of sharing personal experiences for the benefit of the reader is clearly overstepped in the following examples: referral to his vasectomy (p. 6), his personal opinions of his "knucklehead boss" (p. 53), his in-depth reference to buying a car and having to use his "bullshit detector" (p. 55), and his descriptions of Chuck E. Cheese restaurants as being "parental torture chambers" (p. 60).
Some issues in the book appear to be more related to deafness, yet do not seem to assist the parent in their learning in any way other than to reveal the author's personal opinions and vendettas: sharing that he wanted to bonk hearing people's heads in an American Sign Language class (p. 27), that he felt bitter about a certain publishing house rejecting one of his manuscripts (p. 32 and again on p. 59), and referring negatively to another Deaf parents' discipline style (p. 108) made for uncomfortable reading.
Throughout the sharing of personal experiences, many of the examples are very specific to Fremont, making it difficult for an international reader to try and gain more general information about the journey and choices made. Yet, despite the specificity, much was shared and indeed learned about the father–child relationship, which the reader can benefit from. One of the areas of specificity that was both unprofessional and unnecessary were the numerous accounts of naming and blaming of specific people and programs that vexed the author. It is neither beneficial to the parents reading the book nor to the Deaf cause in general that these personal vendettas are handled in such a public arena, and it was quite unexpected in a publication of this nature.
Overall, I believe there is indeed something to learn from the personal experiences of parents of deaf children; however, I found the issues mentioned above and the frequent meandering off track distracting.
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