Assignment 5b: Train Go Sorry Reflection

The first essay I read was Ly’s. Towards the end of his essay Ly makes a personal connection with chapter 9 when Leah describes the source of her grandma’s deafness. Leah’s grandmother became deaf at three years old from a bad infection and Ly had a similar situation occur with his cousin. However, instead of seeing a doctor to cure the infection his cousin’s parents attempted to change his name to one that means “ugly”. They did so because in old Vietnamese culture they believe that if the children’s names are a reflection of bad meaning, that an evil spirit will not want to take away the child, and the child will be safe. I never knew this was part of Vietnamese culture. I found this extremely interesting in comparison to the American medical world.

Ly’s Blog:
http://kiddog18.blogspot.com/2009/04/5a.html

The second essay I read was Jennifer’s. From Jennifer I learned that a common mistake that hearing people make is that they think the Deaf would want to hear and regret loosing the sense. This in fact, is not true. The Deaf culture’s attitude has turned their view of deafness into a positive one; they believe that it is just a trait they have to live with. For the Deaf community, learning ASL is just like learning to speak another language. I came across pieces of this attitude throughout the author’s descriptions but I had never really considered this fact until Jennifer brought it up in her essay.

Jennifer’s Blog:
http://jennifer-humanities7.blogspot.com/2009/04/assignment-5a-train-go-sorry.html

The last essay I read was written by Sierra. Sierra pointed out the history of ASL. She said that American Sign Language was created in 1817, but it wasn’t considered an actual language until the 1950’s. Again, I vaguely remember reading this fact in the story, but I was surprised to reread it in Sierra’s essay. This made me realize just how far Deaf culture has come and the obstacles it has had to face in order to be viewed in a positive light.

Sierra’s Blog:
http://sierradotcom.blogspot.com/2009/04/assignment-5a.html