Name: Mean Little Deaf Queer
ISBN: 9780807072905

Terry Galloway

Recounts the author's experiences of growing up with a nervous system that had been adversely affected in utero by an experimental medication, describing her hallucinatory youth as a hearing-impaired gay member of a conservative hometown, the defiance that marked her relationships, and her obsessions with language, duplicity, and performance.

A Memoir

Mean Little Deaf Queer

When Terry Galloway was born on Halloween, no one knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system. After her family moved from Berlin, Germany, to Austin, Texas, hers became a deafening, hallucinatory childhood where everything, including her own body, changed for the worse. But those unwelcome changes awoke in this particular child a dark, defiant humor that fueled her lifelong obsessions with language, duplicity, and performance. As a ten-year-old self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater, whether onstage or off, to defy and transcend her reality. With disarming candor, Terry writes about her mental breakdowns, her queer identity, and living in a silent, quirky world populated by unforgettable characters. What could have been a bitter litany of complaint is instead an unexpectedly hilarious and affecting take on life.

Mean Little Deaf Queer A Memoir

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