Shouting Won't Help: About the Book
There are many books about deafness, but very few about going deaf. The difference is profound. To lose your hearing, someone once said, is to lose part of your self.
I know. I've been there. "Shouting Won't Help" shares my experience.
When I started thinking about this book, I had been struggling with increasingly severe hearing loss for much of a decade. I was depressed, angry, stalled in my work, isolated from my family and friends. My reaction was in no way unique.
Hearing loss is a hidden disability, one often borne in secret. It affects friendships, family, and professional lives. Many hearing-impaired people have told me their stories. In the book, I share theirs along with my own, in the hope that others will come to see that there is a path to acceptance, a way to return to life. Life after deaf.
Forty-eight million Americans have some degree of hearing loss—17 per-cent of the population. If you’re among them, or if you’re married to someone with hearing loss, or if you're a friend, a colleague, a relative, this book may help in coming to that elusive state of acceptance. The first step, acknowledgment, is a major one -- major both in effort and reward. I hope this book will help you find your way there.
"Shouting Won't Help" is a memoir, but it's also a thoroughly reported book about the costs and efficacy of hearing aids and cochlear implants, the dangers of our noisy environment, what we know about the causes and treatments for hearing loss. The final chapter looks at promising research into a biological cure for hearing loss.
It's also a manifesto for those of us with hearing loss. Among other points, I encourage those with hearing loss to acknowledge their loss to themselves and others; to find others like them and share their experiences; to use assistive technology and ask for it in the workplace; to lobby for equal access in theaters, transportation and elsewhere; to lobby for reimbursement for hearing aids as a medical expense. Finally, to advocate for noise controls. Excess noise is the single largest cause of hearing loss.
I know. I've been there. "Shouting Won't Help" shares my experience.
When I started thinking about this book, I had been struggling with increasingly severe hearing loss for much of a decade. I was depressed, angry, stalled in my work, isolated from my family and friends. My reaction was in no way unique.
Hearing loss is a hidden disability, one often borne in secret. It affects friendships, family, and professional lives. Many hearing-impaired people have told me their stories. In the book, I share theirs along with my own, in the hope that others will come to see that there is a path to acceptance, a way to return to life. Life after deaf.
Forty-eight million Americans have some degree of hearing loss—17 per-cent of the population. If you’re among them, or if you’re married to someone with hearing loss, or if you're a friend, a colleague, a relative, this book may help in coming to that elusive state of acceptance. The first step, acknowledgment, is a major one -- major both in effort and reward. I hope this book will help you find your way there.
"Shouting Won't Help" is a memoir, but it's also a thoroughly reported book about the costs and efficacy of hearing aids and cochlear implants, the dangers of our noisy environment, what we know about the causes and treatments for hearing loss. The final chapter looks at promising research into a biological cure for hearing loss.
It's also a manifesto for those of us with hearing loss. Among other points, I encourage those with hearing loss to acknowledge their loss to themselves and others; to find others like them and share their experiences; to use assistive technology and ask for it in the workplace; to lobby for equal access in theaters, transportation and elsewhere; to lobby for reimbursement for hearing aids as a medical expense. Finally, to advocate for noise controls. Excess noise is the single largest cause of hearing loss.
|
"Shouting Won't Help: Why I -- and 50 Million Other Americans -- Can't Hear You"
By Katherine Bouton Sarah Crichton Books/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux. February 2013 |
Katherine Bouton is a former editor at The New York Times. She is married to the writer Daniel Menaker. They live in New York and have two grown children.
Email: katherinebouton@gmail.com |
