Loss For Words Paper - Grade: A PDF

Preview

Summary

Reflection paper for book Loss For Words by Lou Ann Walker ...

Description

Name Professor Course Date Loss for Words Paper In A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family by Lou Ann Walker, Lou Ann writes of her experience growing up with deaf parents and her experiences entering adulthood, having grown up with deaf parents. Lou Ann describes embarrassment she felt during her childhood because of her parent’s deafness. Lou Ann also speaks of her different experiences interpreting for her parents. She speaks of being her parent’s connection to the hearing world. Throughout the book we begin to see Lou Ann’s built up resentment and anger towards her parents. By the end of the book, a shift is seen in the way that Lou Ann perceives her parents. Lou Ann’s parents had similar experiences growing up as deaf with hearing parents which gives them those common experiences. Lou Ann’s father, Gale, drove two and a half hours every weekend to see her mother while they were dating. I think it’s endearing that her father was willing to drive that distance every weekend to see her mother. Her father eventually asks her mother to marry him on a picnic with tons of people around them having conversations and playing catch. With all of this happening around them, the moment was still very intimate as no one around them knew what they were saying. Lou Ann’s parents seem to have a good relationship and are happy together. During Lou Ann’s years growing up she was responsible for interpreting for her parents, she was their main communication to hearing people. Lou Ann also often helped them fill out forms and write letters. Lou Ann was responsible for answering the phone and also making phone calls for her parents. Lou Ann also would inform her parents on

information such as vaccinations and polio outbreaks, at the young age of four. As Lou Ann gets older her father often trusts her judgement when it comes to transactions and banking. Lou Ann goes to college at first nearby, to become a teacher for the deaf. While she hadn’t put much thought into this, she figured it would be a good career and felt she had a duty and obligation. Lou Ann had focused on oral methods until she met a deaf graduate student named Marion. Lou Ann describes how the professors rarely talked to Marion and treated her condescendingly. Lou Ann applied to transfer to four colleges and ultimately chose to transfer to Harvard. That summer Lou Ann worked as a reporter for a paper. Lou Ann speaks of how she felt she used her parents on her admissions form and she also felt she used her parents deafness as a totem. She often would bring up deafness when asked about herself. Throughout her time at Harvard, Lou Ann often feels guilty and as if she has something to confess relating to her parent’s deafness. After Harvard Lou Ann moved to New York and got an editorial job at New York magazine. However, after a few months the editor in chief was losing contractual control and someone was attempting to buy the magazine. When Lou Ann goes home for Christmas she tells them that she loves New York and her job instead of telling them that she isn’t sure if she will have a job when she returns. She does this as to not worry them and I believe it is also her way of protecting them as she has done most of her life. When Lou Ann returns she ends up moving to another magazine that her boss was named editor of and asks her to go with him. Lou Ann finds her salary doesn’t go very far in New York and ends up working at the magazine during the day while interpreting and teaching sign language weekends and nights. Lou Ann seemed to enjoy teaching sign language and discussed the many different settings and situations in which she has interpreted in.

While interpreting in a psychiatric ward for a patient, Lou Ann had a breakdown as she felt she had been merely an interpreter her whole life and she had never discovered her own identity. She wrote that she felt helpless as her parents were, she could not make her parents hear nor could she make them heard. Lou Ann became filled with built up anger from her childhood. Lou Ann felt as if the responsibilities of her parents took away from her life. Lou Ann stopped interpreting and stopped doing things she didn’t want to do as to regain control that she felt she didn’t have. Interpreting began to bring back shame and embarrassment from her childhood. Eventually Lou Ann’s anger turned into sadness, sadness of what she had lost and could not be regained. Lou Ann eventually returned home to see her parents in which she realized that she was angry at them for not fighting back when they were mistreated when in reality their innocence was their protection. She realized her parents chose to enjoy what they had rather than be bitter. By the end of the book Lou Ann no longer felt embarrassment of her parents as she did before. She realized that deafness in her family did not result in a lack of love. I believe Lou Ann realized she had not lost as much as she thought she had. While reading this book, I saw how Lou Ann’s experience growing up as a CODA led her to feel anger, resentment and guilt in adulthood. She felt as though her parent’s deafness took away from her life and that she had lost so much that she could not get back. She felt as if she had to protect her parents from the harsh world in which they never fought back against. This caused her to feel helpless and as if she could not accomplish anything. Towards the end of the book, Lou Ann is able to realize that parents were not helpless and as naive as she might have thought. She realizes that her parents are aware of how harsh the world is and choose not to fight back, they choose to be happy with what they have. Their innocence is their own protection against the harsh reality. Lou Ann had always perceived her parents as naive and innocent, she

believed she had to protect them and felt helpless as she was not able to. By the end of the book, Lou Ann perceives her parents as stronger than she knew....