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Rosie Malezer

Autor/a de How to be Deaf

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I stumbled across How to be Deaf at Goodreads where its author Rosie Malezer had reviewed another self-published book that I was curious about. This is the blurb:
For over 40 years of living in a hearing world, a woman wakes up one day without sound. After being diagnosed as profoundly Deaf, she realises that she now lives in a world filled with audism, surdophobia, and people who blind-side her at every opportunity.
After having her rights being taken away and being threatened with arrest for talking too loudly in a government building when she begged for an interpreter, she decides to put together a book for her younger self, in the hopes of softening the impact of such a hard transition. Going from hearing to Deaf really knocks the wind out of you, but not for the reasons you would expect.

I was puzzled by those two terms: audism and surdophobia and had to hunt around online to find out what they meant:
Audism is the notion that one is superior based on one’s ability to hear or to behave in the manner of one who hears, or that life without hearing is futile and miserable, or an attitude based on pathological thinking which results in a negative stigma toward anyone who does not hear. (Wikipedia)
Surdophobia is the hostility, intolerance or fear against Deaf people, Deaf culture and the Deaf community. … It can consist of a range of negative attitudes towards Deafhood, the idea of deafpositive and Deaf rights. (This definition came up on Google search results page but the Wikiwand site from which it came seems not to exist any more).

Unwittingly, I had dipped my toe into the Deaf culture v Hearing culture debate, about which I knew almost nothing. But I also didn’t know anything about what adult onset deafness might be like, so I bought the book.

At the outset, I should say that the Kindle edition of How to be Deaf does have some of the problems that mar self-published books. Malezer writes well in an engaging style and there are few flaws such as missing words or faulty spelling or grammar. But there are some repetitions of incidents that an editor would have corrected, as when she writes twice in two separate locations about being given a wheelchair or a menu in Braille because that’s what panic-stricken people do when they think she is ‘disabled’. Also, the voice of the older and wiser Rosie advising her younger self seems to fade away in sections of the book where strong opinions dominate, particularly in the section about cochlear implants, about which Malezer writes with passion. (I don’t have an opinion about this issue, other than that, as with most of such issues, I think it’s a good idea to take advice from professional sources with experience in the field).
More problematic is the issue with the layout of images which obscure the text in the Kindle edition.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/07/10/how-to-be-deaf-by-rosie-malezer-bookreview/ and you can also see an interview with the author at https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/07/10/meet-an-aussie-author-rosie-malezer/
… (més)
 
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anzlitlovers | Jul 14, 2018 |

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