Contributions by Cynthia Neese Bailes, Nina Batt, Lijun Bi, Hélène
Charderon, Stuart Ching, Helene Ehriander, Xiangshu Fang, Sara
Kersten-Parish, Helen Kilpatrick, Jessica Kirkness, Sung-Ae Lee, Jann
Pataray-Ching, Angela Schill, Josh Simpson, John Stephens, Corinne
Walsh, Nerida Wayland, and Vivian Yenika-Agbaw
Children, Deafness, and Deaf Cultures in Popular Media examines how
creative works have depicted what it means to be a deaf or hard of
hearing child in the modern world. In this collection of critical
essays, scholars discuss works that cover wide-ranging subjects and
themes: growing up deaf in a hearing world, stigmas associated with
deafness, rival modes of communication, friendship and discrimination,
intergenerational tensions between hearing and nonhearing family
members, and the complications of establishing self-identity in
increasingly complex societies. Contributors explore most of the major
genres of children's literature and film, including realistic fiction,
particularly young adult novels, as well as works that make deft use of
humor and parody. Further, scholars consider the expressive power of
multimodal forms such as graphic novel and film to depict experience
from the perspective of children.
Representation of the point of view of child characters is central to
this body of work and to the intersections of deafness with discourses
of diversity and social justice. The child point of view supports a
subtle advocacy of a wider understanding of the multiple ways of being
D/deaf and the capacity of D/deaf children to give meaning to their
unique experiences, especially as they find themselves moving between
hearing and Deaf communities. These essays will alert scholars of
children's literature, as well as the reading public, to the many
representations of deafness that, like deafness itself, pervade all
cultures and are not limited to specific racial or sociocultural groups.
