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Altering Perception - Summary and Analysis of Lou Ann Walker’s Memoir "A Loss for Words"

Summary and Analysis of Lou Ann Walker’s Memoir "A Loss for Words"
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Deaf Culture And Heritage (CMD202)

30 Documents
Students shared 30 documents in this course
University

SUNY New Paltz

Academic year: 17/18
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Altering Perception Lou Ann Walker’s memoir A Loss for Words chronicles her experience of growing up as a CODA (hearing child of Deaf parents). Walker reflects on the events of her past – how they changed her, shaped her, and in the end, how growing up in her unique and loving family altered her perception altogether. She narrates her parent’s lives and then her own life, taking the reader along on her journey of discovery through which she was able to come to an understanding of her parent’s Deafness. She begins by describing her innate childhood acceptance of the way her family was; as a little girl she did not yet realize that other families were different. As Walker grew up, made hearing friends, and went to school however, this acceptance began to turn into resentment and misunderstanding. For much of her teenage and young adult years, Lou Ann was conflicted, torn between the two worlds neither of which she felt to be truly a part of. By the end of her memoir, Lou Ann Walker describes a final, conclusive realization that she had finally arrived at, through all her years of trying to accept and to understand. “For me,” she writes, “the past had finally emerged from being a horrible, dark secret to being an unusual family’s history. I was altering my perception to make my life happier and easier to live, and that change was working well” (208). The memoir begins with Lou Ann’s narration of her parent’s childhoods and lives. She goes back in time, to long before she was born, and familiarizes her readers with her grandparents (Grandpa and Grandma Wells, Nellie and H.) all of her aunts and uncles, and

finally, her parents Gale and Doris Jean. She tells the stories of how both Gale and Doris became deaf from illnesses in early childhood, and relates the responses and reactions of each of their families with care and precision. Walker describes her parents’ experiences in school as though she was there herself: she captures her mother’s crippling fear of the strict matron at her boarding school, and conveys her father’s confusion and alienation when he was mainstreamed and had to attempt to understand the teacher in a regular hearing school from the back row of a large classroom. Walker goes on to retell the story of her parent’s meeting, courtship and finally their marriage in 1950, through light-hearted, happy language that is relatable and touching to any reader. In many of the stories that Lou Ann tells in this portion of the memoir, the fact of her parent’s deafness is always a present yet not defining aspect. The stories are simply and humanly relatable in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with being Deaf. Having familiarized the reader with all members of her family and their unique backstories, Lou Ann Walker continues to introduce herself into the narrative. She describes her role in her family during her years growing up, and comments on the fact that, like any young child, she did not realize that what she had was different and out of the ordinary. She diligently made appointments, interpreted phone calls, and translated business transactions for her parents. She accepted these duties as simple facts of life, and did not realize until later, that these were not the usual chores of a child in grade school. The most difficult part of her responsibilities as a mediator between the Deaf and hearing worlds, were the ever-present instances of harshness and

After finishing high school, Lou Ann experienced going away from home for the first time. She attended Ball State to become a teacher in Deaf Education, but then transferred to Harvard to study comparative literature. In the first chapter of her memoir, titled “Rearview Mirror”, she describes the day when her parents drove her to her new campus at Harvard. She mentions that in her application essay, she wrote about her experiences growing up as a CODA, and the technical and social difficulties she had faced in her life with Deaf parents. “Many applicants use a father’s or grandfather’s degree to get them into the family alma mater,” she writes, “but neither of my parents had set foot in a college classroom. The irony that I was shamelessly using my deaf mother and my deaf father to get into Harvard was not lost on me” (8). As Lou Ann went away to college, she was able to clarify for herself, the gap between the two worlds that she had been trying so hard to bridge all her life. Being away from her Deaf parents, from her Deaf home, she began to finally understand the distinction between, as well as her place in, both Deaf and hearing communities. Lou Ann finished college at Harvard, and then later moved on to live and work in New York City for a magazine. Finally, Lou Ann Walker became registered as an interpreter, and again found herself witnessing the prejudice and injustice towards Deafness that she spent her childhood years trying to shield her parents from. At the end of the memoir, Lou Ann experiences a moment of breakthrough, while interpreting for a mental patient’s appointment. She suddenly begins to realize just how much of her life had been dedicated to serving as a bystander and translator, as simply an opinion-less

means of others’ communications. All of her childhood feelings of resentment, helplessness, confusion, anger and disappointment come to the surface, and she finds herself forced to cope with everything at once. Finally, after visiting and speaking heart-to-heart with her parents, after mourning her Grandfather’s death together with the rest of her family, and after celebrating her sister Jan’s wedding, Lou Ann Walker is able to shift her perspective on her parents’ role in her life, as well as on her relationship with them. She comes to understand just how many of the difficulties she thought she had been dealing with alone, they were dealing with just as much. And most importantly, at the end of her memoir A Loss for Words, she expresses that she has altered her perception of her family and of her past from something shameful and difficult, to a unique journey, which they had all gone through together.

Works Cited: Walker, Lou Ann. A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family. Harper Perennial, 1987.

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Altering Perception - Summary and Analysis of Lou Ann Walker’s Memoir "A Loss for Words"

Course: Deaf Culture And Heritage (CMD202)

30 Documents
Students shared 30 documents in this course

University: SUNY New Paltz

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Altering Perception
Lou Ann Walker’s memoir A Loss for Words chronicles her experience of growing up as
a CODA (hearing child of Deaf parents). Walker reflects on the events of her past – how they
changed her, shaped her, and in the end, how growing up in her unique and loving family altered
her perception altogether. She narrates her parent’s lives and then her own life, taking the reader
along on her journey of discovery through which she was able to come to an understanding of
her parent’s Deafness. She begins by describing her innate childhood acceptance of the way her
family was; as a little girl she did not yet realize that other families were different. As Walker
grew up, made hearing friends, and went to school however, this acceptance began to turn into
resentment and misunderstanding. For much of her teenage and young adult years, Lou Ann was
conflicted, torn between the two worlds neither of which she felt to be truly a part of. By the end
of her memoir, Lou Ann Walker describes a final, conclusive realization that she had finally
arrived at, through all her years of trying to accept and to understand. “For me,” she writes, “the
past had finally emerged from being a horrible, dark secret to being an unusual family’s history. I
was altering my perception to make my life happier and easier to live, and that change was
working well” (208).
The memoir begins with Lou Ann’s narration of her parent’s childhoods and lives. She
goes back in time, to long before she was born, and familiarizes her readers with her
grandparents (Grandpa and Grandma Wells, Nellie and H.T.) all of her aunts and uncles, and
1

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