Description
"In the mid-nineteenth century, deaf people were expected to overcome their hearing defects, to learn to mask their deafness through speech or speechreading, undergo various medical therapeutics, or make use of hearing aids. A variety of methods were used from burning caustics, blistering, hammering, and bloodletting to mercury, urine, oil of earthworm, and fat of eels. Ear trumpets and other prosthetics provided glimmers of hope, though in many instances, they were useless for pre-lingually deaf persons. But any cure was better than no cure. The message was so powerful that even as safer surgical procedures and newer technologies were devised, the message remained steadfast, inviting unscrupulous quacks to profit by promising hope. Hearing Happiness explores how, between the 1860s and 1960s, as American culture was obsessed with establishing conformity, the problem of deafness was perceived as nothing more than a problem of better living. The author's personal journey, narrated along the way, makes vivid this new and distinctive account of American deaf history, told through the lens of medical and technological "cures" before modern hearing aids and implants"--
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Weaving together lyrical history and personal memoir, Virdi powerfully examines society’s—and her own—perception of life as a deaf person in America. At the age of four, Jaipreet Virdi’s world went silent. A severe case of meningitis left her alive but deaf, suddenly treated differently by everyone. Her deafness downplayed by society and doctors, she struggled to “pass” as hearing for most of her life. Countless cures, treatments, and technologies led to dead ends. Never quite deaf enough for the Deaf community or quite hearing enough for the “normal” majority, Virdi was stuck in aural limbo for years. It wasn’t until her thirties, exasperated by problems with new digital hearing aids, that she began to actively assert her deafness and reexamine society’s—and her own—perception of life as a deaf person in America. Through lyrical history and personal memoir, Hearing Happiness raises pivotal questions about deafness in American society and the endless quest for a cure. Taking us from the 1860s up to the present, Virdi combs archives and museums in order to understand the long history of curious cures: ear trumpets, violet ray apparatuses, vibrating massagers, electrotherapy machines, airplane diving, bloodletting, skull hammering, and many more. Hundreds of procedures and products have promised grand miracles but always failed to deliver a universal cure—a harmful legacy that is still present in contemporary biomedicine. Weaving Virdi’s own experiences together with her exploration into the fascinating history of deafness cures, Hearing Happiness is a powerful story that America needs to hear.
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