Sound and Fury

This documentary made me mostly furious. It seemed to me that the deaf family members in the documentary took a unilateral view to what community their children could be raised in and ignored the multidimensional life their children could have lived. Having been a child of a biracial, bilingual, foreign family, I was disappointed that this documentary did in no way address how many children in this world adapt very well to two different spheres of life.

I understand that being deaf and speaking are two different experiences, but I also fully understand how adaptable children are. When I was four years old, I barely spoke any French but fluently understood it. After I finished pre-K we moved to France where I fully learned to read, write, and speak French in about nine months. Children's minds work like sponges and adapt like the flu every year. After only two years of living in Paris, I decided I no longer wanted to speak English and excel only in French. I had skipped a grade and only continued to improve. When I moved back to the United States in 2004, my English was deplorable. Again, I adapted and am now one of the top ten students in my class. My entire life I have been thrown from different cultures and languages like a basketball but I still have excelled in my current life. On the contrary, in my humble opinion, without this severe experience in my early life, I would have never been as successful as I am today. 

To this exact point, I would like to comment on the Sound and Fury situation. Heather was obviously a very bright and excited four year old. She could have easily maintained her sign language abilities and learned to speak like I learned English. Although it would obviously be a very different experience, I think it would have occurred. Her family was being completely unreasonable in their fear of having her lose her deaf culture. I'm a proud Guadeloupean, Frenchwoman, and American to this day. I have learned about all my cultures and stand for their values like Heather would have. 

Ultimately, I was kinda right. Mr. Kunkle told us later on that Heather did get the cochlear implant and was quite successful in her life. So, I told Peter and Nita so.