Reviewer Maria Savva : Maria is a lawyer and writer from the UK. She has published four novels and three collections of short stories and she is currently editing her fifth novel. She is also a resident author/moderator for BestsellerBound.com. You can find out more about Maria by following on her WEBSITE.
Author: Bainy B. Cyrus
ISBN:
9781450540315
Publisher: CreateSpace
Click Here To Purchase All Eyes: A Memoir of Deafness
An interesting
memoir about a woman who was born with a level of deafness resulting
from a virus her mother contracted whilst pregnant. Bainy B.
Cyrus is the only hard of hearing member of a hearing family and
consequently it took a few years before her deafness was diagnosed.
She had to undergo many tests before the deafness was discovered and
the type of deafness was identified.
This book does a lot to
educate the reader about deafness, not only from the view of someone
who is hard of hearing, but also because the author shows us through
her writing some of the basic misconceptions about the condition.
For example, it is sometimes assumed that because someone is deaf
they would automatically know sign language, or they are able to lip
read, or they can’t talk, or their hearing aids can restore their
hearing. All of these, and other assumptions are untrue.
Bainy B. Cyrus expresses well in her book that as she was
growing up she wanted to be treated like everyone else, and not as
someone with a disability. She also explains how hard it is for
a deaf or hard of hearing child to learn to speak or understand
language. She was sent to a school where deaf children were
taught to lip read rather than use sign language, in the hope that
they will be better able to integrate with the hearing community.
Bainy found that she wanted to integrate more with the hearing
community because she came from a hearing family, so after going to
the deaf school, she then attended a hearing school and college where
she made friends with hearing children, and was able to develop good
relationships with them. In contrast, one of her closest
friends from school went on to learn sign language and to spend most
of her time with the deaf community. The book does well to show
how each individual who suffers from deafness has many choices to
make as to how they will deal with the condition, and it throws light
on the prejudices that surround deaf/hard of hearing people in their
daily lives.
Bainy highlights the important issue that it takes
deaf children longer to learn right from wrong as they are not able
to hear people talking about what is good and what is bad. The
author relates her experiences of being taken advantage of because of
her slower rate of social development.
The book also explains the
difference between being profoundly deaf and being hard of hearing.
Bainy is hard of hearing and states the case that sometimes this is
harder for people to understand or deal with.
This
would be a great book for parents of a deaf or hard of hearing child,
as it gets into the mind of a person growing up with the condition,
and explains how they feel. It would also be helpful to anyone
involved in teaching or working with people who have any type of
disability.
With this book, Bainy has shown that deafness, just
like any disability, or in fact anything that makes someone a bit
different from others, can have a profound effect of that person’s
upbringing and life.
The author is someone who struggled through
her education and wanting to fit in, but she came out as a successful
adult and now uses her experiences, through her work, to help
others.