I hope that this is the right board to post this thread under as there is no board for books which I think it should add books in this board. Movies, Music, TV & Books. Recently I have started reading a book called Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood and it's quite interesting, as I am hard of hearing so it kind of connects me in some way but the book is for anybody to read about the research that was done by Dr. Paddy Ladd. Dr. Paddy Ladd is a PHD researcher, author and activist, in this book he writes about his researches on discovering the word "deafhood" and the research to help his understanding in deaf culture and share it with worldwide by writing the book. Have you ever read this book before? If so what is your feedback about this book? If you haven't read it then I highly recommend you to read it, either buy it or go to library and borrow the book to read it as it's published book in worldwide.
I have not read the book, however I did take three years of sign language back in college. I was taught by deaf professor and will always remember the effect he had on my perception of people as well as the deaf community. I myself am not deaf. Within the deaf community, there is a culture that is hard to explain to people of hearing. This culture is cultivated around the idea that they are not disabled nor need special needs, that they are normal and don't require any special help. Because people may view hard of hearing as a disability, many deaf people may perform cochlear implants, which when I submersed in the deaf community, was against some deaf individuals beliefs. Some may call it pride but it isn't that. It is hard to explain like I have mentioned. "deaf hood" as the book refers to, maybe a bond that all deaf and hard of hearing share together, as the commonality of breaking through society's adversity.
About cochlear implants you are right in some way but the major reason that the deaf community are against it is because it harms deaf and hard of hearing people. It caused several deaf and hard of hearing death (very true, do a research on them and you'll be surprised) and we protest against them in attempt to get them to have some kind of options. And another one is that the companies who makes cochlear implants often push us down by always telling people something like this "If you have cochlear implants then you can be equal to everyone else" or "Cochlear implants helps you to become a part of us normal people" and familiar. While we don't want to destroy their business as we won't but what we want is they to implement a policy for the age restriction because often parents just have cochlear implants on their children right after they born and that's unfair, don't you think? That's what we are against them for, we want them to have age restriction so that if anyone wants to have cochlear implants that they MUST choose to have them on their own, not somebody else choice because doing this violates children's civil rights in some way if you think about it. We want children to be grown first so that they can choose if they want cochlear implants by their own choice once they are matured to know about choosing something because when newborn children gets older sometimes they dislike what their parents has done to them, such as having some tattoos on their skins by parents choice but not children's choice and they grew older and they are stuck with tattoos that they dislike. And also another thing what we don't like about them is where they said that if we have cochlear implants that we would be part of other people (normal people as they call it) but the thing is that they don't understand is even if we are deaf or hard of hearing we are still normal and also that only difference of deaf and hard of hearing and other hearing people is that we can't hear or can hardly ear but we can do everything else that anybody can do.