Deaf Again Written by Mark Drolsbaugh

The book, Deaf Again, written by Mark Drolsbaugh, is an autobiography telling his life story which starts with a young boy growing up who goes through the process of losing his hearing and then, as he gets older, he struggles with trying to fit in as a normal child. When Mark was very young, he could hear fairly well then gradually he went hard of hearing until he eventually went completely deaf. Even though he had two deaf parents, the doctors advised speech therapy and hearing aids because they did not understand Deaf Culture and they thought that Mark would be a lot happier if he could hang on to his hearing persona. Throughout the rest of the book, Mark goes through a lot of stages of trying to fit in with everyone and eventually does find himself and realizes that being Deaf is not a disease, but just a part of who he isAbout the time that Mark was in kindergarten, he thought he was a normal child just like everyone else, but he started to distort things he heard in class and was wondering why everyone would be laughing and why he would be getting corrected. One day in the first grade, Mark came to the realization that something was definitely not right with his hearing. During a Show 'n' Tell activity, he was asked to come to the front of the room to show off one of his toys. After giving a description of the toy, someone raised their hand and had a question. This person was from the other class and was a couple rows back so there was absolutely no way that Mark could understand what he was saying. The only thing he heard come out of the boy's mouth was a garbled mess. Mark was so confused and could not answer the child that the teacher scolded him stating that this behavior was inappropriate. Mark did not know what to do. The teacher ended up sending a letter home telling his parents that she believes Mark has a hearing problem and they should have him checked out by a doctor. Since both of his parents are deaf, Mark's grandfather took care of everything. He was devastated when he heard the news basically acting like the boy had a fatal disease. Mark's grandfather tested him by saying a sentence and seeing if he could repeat it, which he could, then his grandfather would cover his mouth and repeat the same sentence, but this time Mark had no idea what his grandfather was saying. Mark came to the realization that all along he had been reading people's lips and he never even knew it.

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