"Learning my Native Language,""The Hands of My Father,""Recollections."

Those three pieces have a common theme, and this common theme is oppression/struggle of deafness. But each pieces has their own theme, which is being stuck in between two worlds, no communication access, and deaf identity.

           “Learning my Native Language’s” theme is being stuck in between two worlds. The woman has difficulties in deaf and hearing world. Like when she is at hearing school, teacher will point out her mistakes on test paper because of her deafness. While at deaf college, she does not have a good signing reception

“The Hands of My Father’s” theme is no communication access. The son’s father will not sign with him. He never had signed with his son. The son wanted to be able to talk with his father but could not. “Recollections’” theme is deaf identity. The woman as a child discovered that she does not want to take any speech classes. She wants to sign only, and not speak.

           An example of struggle is the woman who writes “Learning my Native Language,” struggles with hearing and deaf worlds. The woman is hard-of-hearing. In the hearing world, she cannot catch every word hearing people say. For example, when the teacher or the student speaks, the woman sometimes misses what they say but refuses to ask them to repeat themselves because she is embarrassed of her hearing problems.  In the deaf world she cannot quite catch all of people’s signing.  Also, she entered Gallaudet University, and from there she learned American Sign Language. The ASL teacher that the woman was under is very into the deaf world and looks down on hearing people. The woman feels that she was one of them. She was late at learning sign language, so I think this is one reason why she has problems with being able to talk with deaf people. So it is a struggle for her to exist in both worlds.

In “The Hands of My Father,” the son’s father does not want to sign at all. The son is oppressed because he has no communication access with his father. Father did not like people so he is a quiet man. Also he looks at his son as if he was diseased. The son said that he felt like he was a drought to his father, because he will not try to talk with him in his natural language. He felt oppressed from it.

In “Recollections, “ the author as a little girl goes to an oral school, called Camelot, which does not allow signing. If one get caught, he or she will be punished for it. At the oral school she takes speech lessons at Camelot and Kendall. Then at her last year of elementary, she dropped the speech class. She dropped it because she does not want to talk. After she dropped the class, the speech teacher had asked her why she dropped the class, and the girl responded that she does not want to take the class. The speech teacher looked down at her after that. She rather sign language over oral because when she went to Kendall school, she said that she liked that there is full of sign language while at oral school, she felt isolated because she was not allowed to sign. This is a struggle of deaf identity at the beginning.

          Rather it’s being stuck between both worlds in “Learning my Native Language,” struggling with communication access in “Hands of My Father,” or suffering from understanding and accepting one’s Deaf identity in “Recollections.” Each of the pieces deals with oppression.