Amazon.com: If You Could Hear What I See: Lessons About Life, Luck, and the Choices We Make: Kathy Buckley, Lynette Padwa: Books

If You Could Hear What I See: Lessons About Life, Luck, and the Choices We Make (Hardcover)

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From Publishers Weekly
Buckley, the country's first hearing-impaired comedian and now also a motivational speaker, certainly has the story to back up her words. Buckley grew up in a smalltown Ohio family of noncommunicators who somehow neglected to explain to her the fact of her hearing loss (at age eight, "I still assumed everyone heard the same way I did"). Besides one good friend and one good teacher, her youth was replete with misunderstanding and misery. She halfheartedly attempted self-destructive behavior, was run over by a Jeep, found her first real lover and left him after she was diagnosed, at age 27, with cervical cancer. She rejected a second operation "I decided to take that incredible gift called choice" and changed her diet and her life, most notably confronting the man who'd molested her as a child. She describes affectingly the experience of finding her first effective hearing aid. Then, two-thirds of the way through her tale, she somewhat surprisingly as the memoir up to here is more sober than funny explains that since she'd always used laughter to win people over, she went into comedy and soon added motivational speaking to her performance repertoire. Her message: "get over it and get on with... life." Buckley rebuilds her own relationship with her mother and finds a surrogate family. She urges communication (to break down walls), decries ignorance (which lets people accept unfair labels) and credits God's guidance for putting extraordinary people in her path. Buckley's spirituality might not convince skeptics, but her hard-won victories surely have given her the capacity to see and point others to the bright side. (July) Forecast: Buckley's PBS special will air in August. Audiences know her she is a five-time Comedy Award nominee and the subject of an Emmy-winning documentary and her inspirational story should sell well.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description
She was born with a devastating disability no one could diagnose and labeled mentally retarded by an uncaring school system. She was sexually abused, nearly killed in a car accident, and stricken with cancer-all before the age of thirty.

Kathy Buckley not only survived, but went on to become a top female comic, award-winning author of a one-woman Off Broadway show, and a beloved motivational speaker throughout the country.

In If You Could Hear What I See, Buckley tells her remarkable life story, from her small-town childhood in Wickliffe, Ohio-where she was unable to form words until age seven-to her incredible career as "America's first hearing-impaired comedienne." In chapters such as "I Can Hear the Laughter," "Confessions of a Deaf Catholic," and "Table Manners with Anne Baxter," she shares the pain and pathos of growing up hearing-impaired, the hope that has sustained her through her darkest moments, and the humor that saved her sanity. She talks about the people and events that changed her life and encouraged her to dream. But most of all, If You Could Hear What I See is about a woman who made a choice: to overcome all the obstacles life could throw her way, and to meet those challenges with dignity, courage, and laughter.

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