Summary Of A Loss For Words By Lou Ann Walker

The book that I chose to read and review was A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family by Lou Ann Walker in 1986. Walker's autobiography focuses around her own life growing up in the 1950's and into the 1970's with her family of two other siblings and two deaf parents. Throughout the book it seems as though Walker is struggling with her own identity and how her upbringing around her parents and the environment has ultimately changed her. The struggle of always being depended on just being a child and having so many responsibilities shows through Walker's words a sense of guilt later on in life. With her growing up in a loving home and being her parent's voices she found a cruel world who judged them and labeled them as "deaf and dumb" without …show more content…
Always being their protector and shielding them from any more hurt, Walker held in all of the nasty words and comments people had said over the years but this turned into her own anger and regret. I believe Walker wrote this book to shed light on misconceptions held by much of the general public of people who are hard-of-hearing or deaf and to share her own experiences. At the beginning of the book, Lou Ann Walker is going off to college to Ball State before transferring to Harvard for becoming a deaf education teacher. On her very first night of college and staying a dorm room, she got lonely not being able to see her family or talk to them, so she went to her parent's hotel room and tried to bang on their door. The hotel didn't have any accommodations for the hard-of-hearing and so without being able to get her parent's attention to help her get through her first night, she had to go back to her dorm. To me this seemed as though a cry-out as even though she was loved by her parents and they had a great relationship, they couldn't always do things as hearing people could, and so they couldn't always be there for her. Walker continues the story with her parents. Her mom