I want to thank Teresa Russ for transcribing
Keith Wann's blogtalk radio audio interview with Linda Fiore Sanders, co-author of "
Turn A Deaf Ear". If you need something captioned or transcribed but don't know who to ask, contact
CaptionMatch and they will set you up. Enjoy the interview.
blogtalkradio
ASL Radio with Wann
and Wink - Turn a Deaf Ear - Book
November 21, 2012
KEITH WANN: Welcome, ASL Nation, to another blogtalkradio
ASL radio interview with Wann and Wink.
Wink is out on assignment this week doing some research in another state. He is not able to join us, but I am in
Florida broadcasting to all the 49 states and even our 50 state, hopefully,
soon Puerto Rico.
I’m really
excited. As most of you know anything
about me, I love reading. I actually
grew up reading at a very young age. When
I was in first grade, they sent me over to the third grade class to read those
books, but the thing was I had to go to speech therapy, and I’m saying that
because, when I read a book, I could not say the words out loud, but I
understood them in print. I understood
what they meant, but I just could not say them.
So from a very young age, my mom and dad encouraged me to read
books. Except for signing and exact
English books, I only read that when they wanted me to do a 100 sentences when
I was a bad CODA. Anyway, that joke is
out of the way.
I’m really excited
today. We have an author of a book I
just read called, “Turn a Deaf Ear,” and we have Linda Sanders on and let me
give you a little background on this book.
It’s about a relationship between Linda and a young man who is deaf and
communicates with sign language. This
book is set in the late ‘60s early ‘70s, and as we know now near the year 2012,
things were different back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. So Linda was able to capture the time period
and talk about the hearing and deaf person too.
Linda, how are you
doing today?
LINDA FIORE
SANDERS: I’m doing fine, Keith. Thank you.
KEITH: Absolutely.
Thank you for coming on the show.
I’m excited. Your book is getting
great reviews already. Some of the
reviews are like, “A passionate heart she has for the deaf world. The writing is very personable and
acceptable. It’s a great multicultural
experience. It’s a book that covers
everything about family, friendship, love, and trust.” Before we get to the book, let’s learn a
little bit about you.
LINDA: Did you have any specific questions that I
could answer, or did you want me--.
KEITH: Just as we were talking off the air since we
met before at a comedy show, you know my lifestyle. My question is deaf. Who are you?
A to Z? What?
[laughter]
LINDA: Well, having met John all those years ago was
my first introduction to deaf people. I
used to go to New York with my dad to buy material. He was a tailor, and I used to see people
with their guitars and their cups in the streets of New York, and I became
aware of a lot of different people, blind people, and I just never realized
that deaf people are such--invisible.
They’re just invisible. You don't
see deafness when it’s walking down the streets.
KEITH: Right
LINDA: So having met John was one of those pow
moments and just sort of almost fell in love with him immediately, but I’m an
interpreter. I have been an interpreter
for a number of years, and I am currently interpreting at an elementary school,
and I love the educational interpreting field.
KEITH: You deserve an award. Educational purposes deserve a raise and an
award.
[laughter]
LINDA: In that order. I have lots of varied experiences in that. I’m a certified interpreter. A number of years ago, not too many actually,
it became imperative that we up the standards and that people didn’t just
interpret because they knew the language but that they had to prove that their
quality of interpreting met standards, certain standards. So I’m certified through NAD and got that
over with, and I’ve also interpreted high school, and I still interpret at the
college that you actually did the comedy show for, so pretty-well rounded in
that. I also do community interpreting,
which is sporadic as you well know.
KEITH: Well, yeah, the freelance. So would you say you became an interpreter
because of your interaction with John?
Was there something that sparked you to want to learn signing to
continue and make it into a profession?
LINDA: It just sort of evolved into that,
Keith. I guess because I had that
skill. I never thought, when I met John
and for all the times that we've been married, that it would become a
profession. I just thought it was our mode
of communication. I always loved the
language. I think it’s a beautiful
language. The manual sign language
people are enthralled by it. You must
have experienced this that people just sort of stop and stare.
KEITH: Yes
LINDA: You never know if it’s approvingly or not
until maybe a comment is made, but it did ultimately become my profession, and I’m
very thankful for that. It’s an up and
coming profession. I think we work very hard
at keeping it that. There’s a lot of
integrity that has to be preserved when you’re interpreting, confidentiality, and
things like that. We have rules and
regulations that we follow. So I love
it. I love what I do. Sometimes rarely I feel guilty about getting
paid for it because I love it so much.
KEITH: Absolutely.
LINDA: It’s an up and coming profession. A lot of young people are very interested in
sign language as a profession now.
KEITH: And it’s definitely a profession. If you want to travel, it’s the right
job. So let’s talk about the book. Let me give you the website www.turnadeafear.com, and the book is
also available on Amazon. So how did
this book come about?
LINDA: Well, thank you for offering the website to
your listening audience. It actually
started when my sister just sort of wrote a short story about John and me. We talked to each other almost every day, and
she would sort of ask me different questions about things, and how it all got
started, and I didn’t realize that she was taking notes and actually writing it
down, but that’s how it started. When
she showed it to a small publisher, the publisher just said this really needs
to be a book. So that’s kind of the
spine of how it ended up being more of than just a short story.
KEITH: Right.
How did friends and family--this was set in the ‘60s and ‘70s. How did friends and family react to you
falling in love with a deaf man?
LINDA: When you read the book other than my mom, who
had some reservations at first, her concerns were more personal even then for
me. She was wondering, if we should have
had a deaf child, how she would relate to that child and all of that kind of
stuff but that’s all explained in the book.
She had those reservations, but everyone else embraced him. He is a very unique individual. It was just astounding. Friends started learning sign language for
the novelty of it.
They loved him as
well, but for the most part when the novelty wears off and you probably can
relate to this, it’s fun, and it’s exciting to learn sign language or a limited
version of sign language so that you can communicate, but really when it gets
down to it and you’re going over to friend’s houses for dinner and you realize
you’re on for the whole night, it gets old, and, I think, people realize this
isn’t really what I had in mind that I was going to have to sign everything and
interpret, and then I kind of became the interpreter, and those relationships
sort of drifted off, but it was easier for me at that point, Keith, to bridge
into the deaf world, which I did almost immediately.
KEITH: And I can definitely relate to that. Something that my mom and I still argue about
whenever we go to a family reunion the holidays are coming up, and many times
for Thanksgiving or Christmas I finally had to say, “Mom, we’re going to hire
an interpreter.” I just was not able to
be engaged with other hearing family members because I was always onto my mom,
and it just--and how do you explain--and most all family members didn’t
understand my code of ethics. It’s my
talking and this person and that person.
So, yeah, my mom still is upset that, “You
come--.” I don't want to interpret the whole family
business here, secrets, our secrets that I can't do it. I need to be Keith. This is family. I needed to be calm.
LINDA: Right.
How well expressed because you do lose your identity when you become the
interpreter.
KEITH: Right.
So you pretty much in your experiences as a spouse of a deaf adult you
get up on stage and share your stories.
There are so many things that you experience that I don’t experience of
a CODA because I’m growing up as a child under an authority figure. You're an equal. So I’m sure that at some times, where you go
places, you don't want to take on that role.
You just—“Listen. I’m your wife,”
or “Listen. This is overdoing it.”
LINDA: Well, and it’s true because, when you are
seen publicly and you’re signing, it’s automatically oftentimes assumed that
you are deaf because you’re not necessarily speaking to the waiter every
moment, and you’re just a family at the table, and you will sign, and people
are thinking everybody--although sometimes they thought John was hearing
because he was the man. So a man must be
the hearing one, and the woman must be the deaf one. I mean, just what people’s perceptions of
people signing are, and like I said approving and disapproving. I’ve had many opportunities where people have
been unkind, and it’s been an opportunity to advocate for the deaf because I
think that’s a big part of who we are and what we do, but--.
KEITH: Do you think the level of prejudice against
deaf people has changed from the ‘60s and ‘70s?
LINDA: It has changed. I can say that we’ve moved forward, but I
think, if you drew a line around a room and you measured off that was the
progress of the deaf people have made, I think maybe a foot would be all that
we’ve really made, and in some ways, it seems like we’re going backward, because
there were times when it appears at least in history when sign language was
spoken in certain towns way back when where everybody learned and felt the
responsibility and the need to know it, and now it’s still, I think, perceived
more of a handicap, and I don’t use that word easily.
It’s usually not in
my vocabulary, but when deaf people are applying for jobs, you know I’m really
still disgruntled that people come up with things like, “Well, he can’t use the
phone.” “But in this job, when would he
use the phone?” “Well, he can’t really
communicate with me,” and, “Well, can you write?” I mean, “He can write.” “Well, you know, we wouldn't want to have to
hire an interpreter for every meeting that we have.” It’s just like those things remind me that we
really haven’t come that far if deaf people have such a difficult time doing
something as simple as graduating from high school, maybe taking a couple of
classes in college and preparing to go and do a trade
where now they’re
met with the fact that there’s prejudice against the fact that they’re deaf
even though they can manually do the work.
So also I make no
secret about the fact--I'm not sure if I mentioned this in the book that, when
I was pregnant with my first child, I prayed that my child would be deaf
because I knew that John and I were equipped.
We had talked many times about what we would do as far as education and
that our family would be enhanced and that we would be two deaf people and one
hearing person, and the balance would be thrown on his side, and people are
appalled.
I mean, to this day
people are appalled, “Why would you want a deaf child?” “Why would you have prayed for a deaf child?”
And I was like, “Why wouldn’t I?” “You
know what? Deaf people can do everything
but hear,” and you know people--so I think there’s the prejudice is that people
are still not accepting of that.
It’s like something’s
wrong with a deaf person, and also we’re probably running out of time, but,
when I married John, they dropped my auto insurance. It was a huge auto insurance company, and
they dropped me because he was deaf, and they said that’s a can of worms we’re not
going to open. I said that’s a what, and
“We don’t want to open that can of worms,” and I was like, “So they’re out of
the closet now and in a can?”
[laughter]
So I wrote articles
to the local newspapers and to a couple of the big ones, and then I always sent
copies to the insurance company that, “They’re out of the closet and into the can,
and they won't insure us, and he’s a good driver. He pulls over when he sees the red light that
I don’t even hear because the radio is on.”
So the prejudice, yeah, it still does exist today and in important ways,
but I hope that we’re overcoming that and making strides forward instead of
backward.
KEITH: Often I’m just amazed the ‘88 great federal
law passed 20 years ago, and deaf people like my mom still have to fight for an
interpreter. Doctors are just denying them
rights left and right. A lot of people
that as well relates to the whole car insurance thing because as CODA the joke
is always that, when people find out my parents are deaf, “Oh, can your parents
drive?” “No, no, they sit in the backseat
with a special helmet on.”
[laughter]
“I still drive
them. I fly home to California and pick
them up.”
[laughter]
LINDA: Take mom food shopping. That was 20 years ago, and where have
we--really how far have we come in 20 years?
KEITH: Right.
And then there’s technology nowadays.
Technology is just interesting too because in your book a lot of the
technology that the deaf community has wasn’t there yet -- the TQI, close-caption,
and now video relay service. So that
looks like there’re advancements but, no, it still--deaf people can’t get employment. A lot do but I don’t want to say they don't
get employment, but there’s a lot of--when you talk about the situation happens
still when they go and the employer said, “How do I communicate with you? What if the phone rings? What if the sun goes down? What do we do?” There’s a lot of deaf doctors out there. Lawyers.
It’s sad. It’s ignorance. Ignorance is still out there.
LINDA: It is and it’s hard to live with on a daily
basis. I see it in the schools that kids
are held to standards that hearing kids are held to, and it’s just
different. It’s different, and I’m like
really? Most of the time when going
through these all these tests and stuff that the kids have to perform, and I’m
like, really, does this really apply to a deaf student? And you hear teachers make comments like, “He
really needs to focus on his listening skills,” and I’m like, “I think he’s
going to have to be focusing for the rest of his life, but I think what you
mean is attention span.”
[laughter]
I mean, they use a large--unless
you really understand it at a gut level, you would argue listening skills. He’s deaf, but what she means is he has to
focus more, and they don’t realize that they’re visual learners. I mean, in a classroom where kids are raising
their hands or throwing spit wads or whatever, they’re distracted by that. It does not matter that nobody is talking,
but the visuals that they are aware of.
I often have to take a student into another room where we’re sitting
there, and it’s just him and I, and it’s quiet because he’s now in a quiet room
because he’s so distracted by other things that are going on because that’s
their ears. Their eyes are their ears,
and we’re constantly educating teachers about things like that.
KEITH: You know I love this interview because I love
having guests like yourself who are as so advocate, who are interpreters, who
are here, and we have a lot of the same things in common. So we can go on for an hour talking about
this. I want to make sure we get back to
today’s topic, which is the book, “Turn a Deaf Ear,” and, again, the website is
www.turnadeafear.com. The book is available
at Amazon. Parts of this is
fiction. There’s fictional aspects in
the book. Why did you decide to add
them, and were they inspired by reality?
LINDA: They were based on real scenarios, I think,
is probably the most accurate way to say it, and, well, has it ever happened to
you, Keith, as you’re signing so fluently that you were misunderstood or--.
KEITH: Always.
LINDA: --Mistaken for the deaf people. You do know in some of those chapters in the
book where you’re hearing things and people don’t realize you’re hearing things
and sometimes things are said. So some
of those stories were spun off of real scenarios that happened. Some of it was embellished.
Some of it is
obviously--well, I could do one of those disclaimers. The names were changed to protect the
innocent, but, the names were changed, but there were very many Molly’s, for
example, and situations like that where your heart goes out because you’re now
aware of the situation that’s intimately--you’re just at a gut level with these
people finding out how their lives have been spent, and what they’ve gone
through, and those things in the book are real.
As sad and heart
wrenching as they are, I just hope that, like you said, this book is an
advocate as well for the experiences that deaf people such as Molly went
through, and there’s a lot of Molly’s out there. So I’m hoping we’re peaking the interest of
people. Who’s Molly? What’s she talking about?
[laughter]
For me that was a
real poignant thing that we went through and, of course, her name wasn’t Molly,
but so to answer your question, yes, the fictional part was deviated from to
protect true life scenarios that I’ve experienced as an interpreter and
continue to to this day.
KEITH: Is there a second book in the works?
LINDA: Absolutely--.
KEITH: Yay.
LINDA: Typically, there is and thank you for the
yay. It’s in the works. Unfortunately, if I were retired, I think
that this would be kicked out a lot sooner, but my sister is and she’s working
on it and pushing it through. We convene
and change things around, but it is. It’s
due to come out soon. I would give you a
date, but I don’t want to deceive anybody, but I appreciate the fact that you’ve
read it that you enjoyed it, and I have a question for you.
KEITH: Yes.
LINDA: Am I a SODA?
KEITH: You know I don't know--.
LINDA: Is that a coined--because you’re a CODA, a
child of a deaf adult. I remember one
night when I couldn’t sleep, and I was going to the--.
[laughter]
Let’s see. A wife of a deaf adult, a WODA. No, that’s not attractive, but SODA kind--.
[laughter]
KEITH: There are two groups that claim SODA's: Deaf adult and siblings of deaf adult. There’s not a national conference yet. No one has trademarked it yet, but I kind of
say SODA. Yes, most people like, you
say, they don’t want to say, “I’m a WODA or a CODA of a deaf adult,” yeah, so I
think you have to go SODA. In California
we say CODA pop.
[laughter]
LINDA: Well, thanks for that. I don’t, even if it was official, I don’t
want to speak out of term. I sort of
came up with that on my own, and I heard it years later. I thought maybe that it is a valid term.
So did we cover all
of your--because I was kind of like looking through the questions. You know, I thought the movie “The Family
Stone,” which I'm sure you’ve seen, was so sensitive in the way they handled
the prejudice and the whole aspect of his being at the table and the family
learning sign language and just all of that.
I thought that was one of the examples that are out there that
really--so much of it is contrived, and it’s like niceties, but, I think, that
really showed the troubles that a deaf brother or sister or son has with the
family. It’s real-life stuff.
I have a friend who
said he used to try to ask the family, “What are you laughing about?” And they’d say, “Oh, this or that,” and then
he said I just brought a book to the dinner table every day and I read. It just gets you right in the heart. She (sic) was just there reading as everybody
else was having dinner and conversing.
Families either make the effort and accept 100 percent and learn the
language, or they don’t, and it’s sad when they don’t.
KEITH: As I mentioned earlier about I wanted an
interpreter for Thanksgiving dinner when my mom was there but then on the other
hand, many times have I been hired as an interpreter to interpret Thanksgiving
but that’s because, like you said, every hearing family member does not sign,
and a couple of times deaf people used that opportunity used that platform to
tear into those families. That’s
something like, “Yeah, oh my gosh, just hand me some mashed potatoes, please.”
[laughter]
LINDA: So I can eat with one hand and sign with the
other.
[laughter]
KEITH: If you have a few minutes, I’m curious. With your experience and talking about movies
and books, what about “Switched at Birth”?
What’s your opinion on that as in the fact or--not in the fact. I noticed a surge of people wanting now to
learn ASL. Usually, mostly, from these
teenager girls who want to date Sean Berdy, and there’s some, like you said,
niceties or embellishments or some things on that show. It’s like, yeah, not all deaf people can read
lips through seven wall (sic). That was
a little bit of Hollywood there, but for me what I get out of it--I don't watch
teenage dramas, anyway, but what I get out it, I’m all, yay. If it means more people want to learn my
family’s language, good. Go for it.
LINDA: Right.
And I agree with you 100 percent on that. If it’s that awareness thing that we’ve all
become so--that word has become overused--if it immerses people’s interest and if
they become more aware of some of the plights that deaf people have and
learning the language is the hugest part of that, I think. Yes, that all people can’t speak.
I have deaf kids,
worked with deaf kids over the years, that have gone to speech therapy, and I’m
like why? You know, why? I mean, if they’re not going to be able to
really ever say those words. They write
down words that you don't know or write down words that look unfamiliar to
you. Well, they write down these huge
words that are unfamiliar to me, and they will try to have them say it for the
next three months. He may never say--I
can’t think of one right now but something.
So if there’s an awareness, I think the show is promoting that, and I
think that’s huge. I noticed that there’s
a lot more things on TV and spoken about, don’t you?
KEITH: Yeah.
LINDA: That’s one of the things that I think is
going in the right direction.
KEITH: Absolutely.
I wish I would have had it when I was a kid and more things like that so
that other kids--it would have been more--I don’t want to say the word
normalized. Just would have been--kids
wouldn't have stared as much. Now it’s
just--I think it’s almost passing up Spanish, or it’s right behind Spanish. It’s the third most used language or learned
language. It would have been nice to
have this stuff as a kid. I grew up in
the early ‘70s. I wish Sean Berdy was
born earlier.
[laughter]
LINDA: I bet you do.
Well, in shout out to you, I just had the pleasure of being at one of
your performances, and I just--my sides ached from laughing. You actually called up one of the teachers,
and she was at pantomiming and acting out, and we just to see that as well, but
I’m glad that you’re getting some of the recognition that you deserve, and I
stress some of the recognition that you deserve. You should be just on every college
platform. Those are the people that
relate to you and to this thing that we call interpreting, and I want to
clarify one thing.
We’re not out there
because we complete deaf people or because we feel sorry for deaf people or
because there’s something wrong with deaf people that they can’t write without
having an interpreter attached to their hip.
I think a lot of times deaf people could do things without interpreters,
and it’s mainly the hearing world that requires us. It’s not so much even the deaf people that
require us, but we’re there because we want to bridge that gap, and I don’t
have a holier-than-thou attitude about what I do. I’m humbled by the fact that it’s sort of a
service that I can provide for as long as my hands hold out.
[laughter]
But I think it’s
misunderstood. A lot of people think
that it’s just such a wonderful thing that you do, and it’s like, “Oh, when are
you leaving?” Because it’s not about
us.
[laughter]
We really want to be
the invisible person there. We want to
be their voice when they have a question.
Raise your hand. I’ll voice for
you, and we want to be the ears for them when someone is speaking, and they
want to be part of that audience, but it’s not some major phenomenal, wonderful
thing that we do, but there is a need, and I think I’d like to really encourage
young people to take this seriously.
There’s going to be
a lot of older interpreters that have been around since the ‘60s and the ‘70s
that are going to leave this profession, and there’s a lot of younger people
coming up that they have to--they can’t just go and interpret after their ASL 3
class. You know what I mean? It’s more of a dedication than that, and so
it’s certification, and it’s moving forward.
So I’m sure you agree with all of that as well.
KEITH: I do and we can go on for another hour, but
actually we have about 30 seconds left.
So I want to thank you again so much for coming on today. The book is called “Turn a Deaf Ear.” The website is www.turnadeafear.com, and the
book is available on Amazon. There’s an
Amazon link on that main website. Linda,
thank you, very much for coming on today.
LINDA: Keith, it’s been my pleasure, and I hope to
run into you again maybe locally on stage.
KEITH: Absolutely.
We’ll get you back on here soon.
Thank you.
LINDA: Ok. Thank
you.
KEITH: Thank you.
And, everybody, that is your ASL radio show for the week, for the day,
for the hour. We'll be back. You can listen to the podcast, rebroadcast,
on iTunes. The sign language version
will be up (www.vimeo.com/keithwann) in a couple of weeks. Thank you, very much, for your support. Wink, we miss ya. We’ll see you when you get back. Bye-bye.
[End of Interview]
