Deafless Barry introduces "Deafness For Dummies" to Aidan Mack. The question? Is deaf heredity caused by ASL? By deaf culture? Or by genetics? Should we be ashamed of our history? Erase or hide our history? Deny our history?
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Labeling aside, I was wondering how you know that the first four generations you were talking about were deaf.
ReplyDeleteCensus information on who was deaf, etc. did not exist that far back. In fact, many regions did not bother to record this information even in the past three generations.
Most of us know that our great-grandparents were either hearing or deaf through oral history, but usually we know nothing about the generations before that due to not attaching any importance to it, or suppression of that information.
Dianrez,
ReplyDeleteHow did we know that the first four generations were deaf, you asked. The author who researched our family history published a book, which is found in the library at Shenandoah Valley Virginia mentioned mute and deaf & dumb. Now, this book was written and published during an era when they use such term.
My mom contacted the daughter of the person who wrote that book and received a copy of that book. I've seen it and went even further to travel all the way to the library in Shenandoah Valley to find exactly the same copy there and more! I located five other books on our family lineage and seen similar terms used in these books. Some research provide more details than other researcher. Fortunately for us, our researcher turned out to be a very detailed writer. Hope others will find such luck because I'm sure that I'm not the only one that's out there with 7th generations of deafness label.
Thanks for asking.