The Feel of Silence (Health Society And Policy) [Hardcover]

Bonnie Tucker (Author)

Book Description

Series: Health Society And Policy | Publication Date: November 7, 1995

A memoir of the author's experience as a profoundly deaf infant who became an expert lipreader, and who never learned sign language or met another deaf person until her mid-thirties. It follows her story as she made it through college, to become a corporate litigator.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In this witty, warm, and sensitive memoir, a successful lawyer and professor recalls her life as a child, student, wife, mother, and grandmother. Tucker had to battle against all odds because she also happened to be profoundly deaf. In a poignant, compelling manner, she recounts how she accommodated to the hearing world, becoming a skilled lipreader without learning sign language and never meeting another deaf person until her mid-thirties. Again and again, Tucker emphasizes how important it was for her to be in the mainstream of society and to be involved with life, despite the many difficult choices her disability caused. The humor, anger, sadness, victory, and frustration she expresses combine to leave readers with a refreshing understanding of hearing loss. Recommended for general readers.?Emily Ferren, Carroll Cty. P.L., Westminster, Md.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

The Feel Of Silence is an intimate memoir interlaced with moving examples of the ironies and trials of accommodating to a hearing world by one who was profoundly deaf since infancy. After spending 17 years as a wife and mother, Bonnie Tucker found herself divorced and with several children to support. Alternately angry and sad, funny and introspective, The Feel Of Silence is Tucker's explanation of how she sometimes "bluffed" instead of announcing her deafness. She became an expert lip-reader who never learned sign language and did not meet another deaf person until her mid-thirties. Her compelling story (she became a successful corporate attorney and Professor of Law at Arizona State University) propel the reader through an odyssey of emotions -- the tension inherent in a battle against the odds in a world that takes ringing telephones, repairmen knocking at the door, and the rapid-fire debates of classroom and courtroom for granted. -- Midwest Book Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press (November 7, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566393515
• ISBN-13: 978-1566393515
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,429,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accepting oneself as less than perfect, July 21, 2004

By 

N. Asher (Southeast Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Feel Of Silence (Health Society And Policy) (Paperback)

I found this book to be extremely powerful. Bonnie wholely admits to being in denial about her deafness til she was 38. At first I found this disturbing as she KNEW she was deaf, but claimed to be in denial. Three months AFTER I read the book it finally hit me what she was saying!!! She was not in denial about her deafness, she was in denial about the fact that her deafness made her different from other people, AND she was in denial that it impacted on her life! This was a huge lesson to me, because I was (then) doing the EXACT same thing!! I blamed a madrid of other "things" that affected my life EXCEPT for my hearing loss! What a relief it was to be able to accept the truth and get on with my life, and go forward! I now accept and do know that it is just a part of me that I have to live with every day!!! I must constantly educate others about it, and I am always appreciative of those who make the extra efforts to accommodate me and keep me informed on what is going on around me.

This book was very liberating for me and helped me tremendously! Bonnie is one of the very few deaf authors that addresses the implications that hearing loss has on one's own life, and those people directly around you.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is a true saga of a woman's courage and endurance., May 3, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Feel of Silence (Health Society And Policy) (Hardcover)

The account of a courageous woman who has been deaf since at least age two. Determined to communicate, she taught herself lip reading and speech. Her life has been a journey to defy all obstacles that stood in the path of her being totally involved in the hearing world. She refused to accept permanent set backs and plunged ahead with a strength of determination seldom seen in any human being. Although she had a lifetime to become adept at deafness, she presents as a role model for all of us whether two years deaf as I am, or deaf from birth. She is not an experienced story teller but her life is rich in adventure. It will evoke a plethora of emotions from all readers and may spark the debate about communication styles for deaf children. I would reccommend this book to parents of deaf children and to deaf adults

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Miscataloged but worth reading, August 28, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Feel of Silence (Health Society And Policy) (Hardcover)

I ran into this book by accident looking for a book about law. (LOC cataloged it in the Dewey system as 340.092, near books like Legal Realism at Yale.) It's actually the autobiography of Bonnie Poitras Tucker, born (so far as anyone can tell) totally deaf but who eventually became a lawyer and a law school professor. Tucker's strength is in communicating the burden of being deaf even for a gifted lip reader. I must say that I never thought about how terrifying darkness must be for the deaf, how much it would hurt to be thought rude because one couldn't hear everyday sounds or conversation, or even how a moustache might completely frustrate a lip reader. Tucker's reluctance to tell others about her handicap undoubtedly made some periods of her life more difficult than they might have been otherwise, but it takes little imagination for the reader to sympathize with her desire to be "normal." Curiously, although Tucker, is an expert on the law of disabilities, her book does not address legal issues in any rigorous way. For her, it is a self-evident truth that a theater owner should provide a seat for her interpreter at no charge. Likewise, the brief attempt she makes at discussing her religious beliefs (basically none) is more simplistic than one would expect from a law school teacher. Nevertheless, the book is worth reading. As a teacher who has had a number of deaf students over the years, I will certainly think twice before regrowing my moustache.