Deaf Issues and Awareness in Lou Ann Walker's "A Loss For Words"

In the book A Loss For Words, Lou Ann Walker tells what it was like to grow up with parents who are both deaf. She relates that she became very responsible at a young age. She had to do most communicating for her parents. This is presented right at the start of the book in the prologue on page 2: “I was the child who did all my parents’ business transactions, nearly from the time I was a toddler. I spoke for my parents, I heard for my parents. I was painfully shy for myself, squirming away when the attention was focused on me, but when I was acting for my parents I was forthright.” Lou Ann made their doctor’s appointments and went along to interpret to the doctor and sign to her parents. She ordered for them at restaurants, she corrected grammar in their letters because the deaf have no way to gauge verbal sentence structure and that helps vastly in learning it. She also had to tell them when a call came in saying a friend had died and call others. This relates to some...