Silent Magic: Carmel's book on Deaf Magicians

If you're interested in magic or simply want to learn about Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals who have been involved with magic, Silent Magic is the book for you.

To describe magic and magicians,
You would probably use such words as visual, patter, sound and music. But what if three of those items were gone? Poof! Vanished! Would there—could there—still be magic without “patter” and “sound” and “music?” You bet.

This book includes fifty-nine biographies of Deaf magicians in the United States from the 19th to the 21st centuries.

US $29.95 per copy + US $5.00 for postage and handling.
To purchase the book, you are welcome to email me and I will forward the ORDER FORM to you or you can contact the author:
Dr. Simon J. Carmel
SILENT MAGIC: Biographies of Deaf Magicians
9339 Bridgeport Drive
West Palm Beach, Florida 33411 SimonCarmel13@aol.com

"Dr. Simon J. Carmel’s book is not only a great historical resource, but also it illustrates many personal struggles and triumphs as well. These men and women all shared two very strong common interests: they are or were all deaf, and they all have or had a love for the art of magic. I learned much after reading each story. For instance, I never knew Okito was deaf and that was the reason he created a silent act to music. I applaud Dr. Carmel for all the inspiration and years of effort in creating this important work."
--Kevin James, Comedy Illusionist
Las Vegas, Nevada

Books published in November

Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson
by Susan Burch & Hannah Joyner
Hardcover: 312 pages
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (November 5, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0807831557

Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent 76 years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including 6 in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. But he was deaf and black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is the story of his life. In addition to offering a bottom-up history of life in a segregated mental institution, Burch and Joyner's biography also enriches the traditional interpretation of Jim Crow by highlighting the complicated intersections of race and disability as well as of community and language.

Leading Ladies by Marlee Matlin & Doug Cooney
Reading level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing (November 6, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0689869878

(first mentioned July 5, 2007)

Hoggee by Anna Myers

Reading level: Young Adult
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Walker Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition (November 13, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0802796834

Howard Gardner is starving to death. All spring and summer, Howard and his older, more charming brother Jack worked as hoggees, driving the mules that pulled boats along the Erie Canal. In a misguided attempt to outshine his brother, Howard chooses to stay behind in Birchport for the winter to save his traveling money and send it home to his family. After his winter job falls through, Howard fears that he might not survive the winter. As desperate as Howard is, he is haunted by the sadness he sees in the eyes of Sarah (the Deaf character), the granddaughter of the man who keeps the mules. Even though she’s older than her two sisters, she never speaks, and she seems completely disconnected from the world.

The Spanish National Deaf School: Portraits from the Nineteenth Century by Susan Plann

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Gallaudet University Press; First edition edition (November 15, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1563683555

In nineteenth-century Spain, the education of deaf students took shape through various contradictory philosophies and practices. Susan Plann depicts this ambivalence by profiling a select group of teachers and students in her detailed history The Spanish National Deaf School: Portraits from the Nineteenth Century.Plann’s subjects reveal the political, financial, and identity issues that dominated the operation of the National School for Deaf-Mutes and the Blind in Madrid from 1805 to1899. Roberto Francisco Prádez y Gautier, the first deaf teacher in Spain, taught art from 1805–36; he also was the last deaf teacher for the next 50 years. Juan Manuel Ballesteros, the hearing director from 1835 to1868, enacted an “ableist” policy that barred deaf professors. At the same time, another hearing teacher, Francisco Fernández Villabrille, wrote the first Spanish Sign Language dictionary. In the 1870s, two deaf students, Manuel Tinoco and Patricio García, resisted the physical abuse they received and set the stage for the growth of a Deaf identity that opposed the deprecating medical model of deafness. Marcelina Ruiz Ricote y Fernández a hearing female teacher who taught from 1869 to 1897, combated the school’s sexist polices. The Spanish National Deaf School concludes with Martín de Martín y Ruiz, the most famous deaf-blind student from the Madrid school. Through these portraits, Plann has brought life to the major issues that defined education in nineteenth-century Spain, themes that have influenced the status of deaf Spaniards today.

Nobody's Perfect by Marlee Matlin & Doug Cooney

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Paperback Reprint Pub. Date: November 2007
ISBN-13: 9781416949763

(first mentioned on April 29, 2007. See Review)

A Look at the Past

The late Douglas Bullard authored such books as Islay: A Novel, a book about a deaf man who establishes a deaf homeland by taking over a small state;and, On Deaf Ears, a collection of short stories about his oral deaf school experience. At the time of his death in 2005, Bullard was writing Dingbat, a story about a geologist in the Alaskan wilderness. Bullard was a Gallaudet graduate, an Alaskan geologist, and a former president of the Florida Association of the Deaf.

Tonight when I was browsing the world wide web, I found this article from The New York Times. Although the article was published twenty years ago, much of the content is relevant today. Below the article, I put together a few suggestions of other works one might be interested in reviewing. Sometimes it is good to keep the past in the past; however, after reading through this article, I know that it is also nice to bring the past with us into the future.

Deaf Writer Asks Questions That Echo for Young
SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: November 29, 1987
LEAD: The class of elementary and junior high school students at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf kept up a volley of questions for the novelist who had come to call. Courteously and with humor, the novelist, Douglas Bullard, tried to answer them all.

~The Deaf Way II Anthology: a literary collection of deaf and hard of hearing writers Tonya M. Stremlau(ed.) Publisher: Gallaudet University Press, 2002

~ASL Stories by Doug Bullard

~Deaf Mosaic: No. 13 [Videocassette]. (1986). Washington, DC: Gallaudet College. 4th FLOOR HV2545 .D44 no.13 (30 min.) : Signed and captioned.Douglas Bullard, author of ISLAY, a novel set in a deaf state; Signs Across America, a dictionary of regional American signs; “Legal Corner”, with deaf attorney Sheila Conlon-Mentkowski; actress/author Mary Beth Miller; and Days of Ink and Lead”, an affectionate look at the role the printing profession in deaf culture.

One Day: Our View

Here is a book that you can share with the entire family.
One Day: Our View by Missy Keast comes from a project created when tens of thousands of pictures were taken by amateur and professional photographers within in a 24-hour period on May 1, 1997. Keast published the pictures from the submitted Deaf photographers from around the world. She explains that the book attempts to allow readers to get a glimpse into the lives of the Deaf worldwide.

If you'd like to buy thie book,
http://store.deafnation.com To watch a videoclip in ASL with Missy Keast explaing the project and the outcome, http://www.deafnation.com

PBS Documentary 'Through Deaf Eyes'

THROUGH DEAF EYES is a documentary that explores 200 years of Deaf life in America.

Similar to my interests of how deaf characters have been treated and portrayed throughout literature, this documentary shows how deaf people have been portrayed in society.

Douglas Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey, Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (April 2007)
This book tells the story of Deaf America and includes such topics as education, employment, and family life of Deaf people. The book is the companion to the PBS 2-hr documentary that will air this month. PBS will have a comprehensive website which will accompany the film.