Oliver Sacks

Oliver W. Sacks

A renowned neurologist investigates the world of the deaf, examining their past and present treatment at the hands of society, and assesses the value and significance of sign language. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

A Journey Into the World of the Deaf

Seeing Voices

Like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, this is a fascinating voyage into a strange and wonderful land, a provocative meditation on communication, biology, adaptation, and culture. In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect--a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well. Seeing Voices is, as Studs Terkel has written, "an exquisite, as well as revelatory, work."

Katherine Yang

An engaging and thoughtful (though perhaps slightly wide-eyed) overview of deafness and Deafness. Having read two of his books so far, I think Sacks is an academic and writer who treats his subject with a lot of care and is great at communicating what he knows and has learnt in a very accessible and compelling way to the reader.

Lost all the great quotes I'd saved in my notes, except for this eloquent revelation:
And to be defective in language, for a human being, is one of the most desperate of calamities, for it is only through language that we enter fully into our human estate and culture, communicate freely with our fellows, acquire and share information. If we cannot do this, we will be bizarrely disabled and cut off—whatever our desires or endeavours, or native capacities.
It is often not deafness that disables, but rather lack of language, lack of access, lack of understanding.

So much awe and respect for the Deaf community and their culture.

P.S.: The only copy of Seeing Voices I could get my hands on was the audiobook version; irony notwithstanding, it was fairly enjoyable and I do want to try more audiobooks in the future.

Moffatt Clarke

Teddy Calavera

Lauren hughes 

Imaginative and insightful, Seeing Voices offers a way into a world that is, for many people, alien and unfamiliar - for to be profoundly deaf is not just to live in a world of silence, but also to live in a world where the visual is paramount. In this remarkable book, Oliver Sacks explores the consequences of this, including the different ways in which the deaf and the hearing learn to categorise their respective worlds - and how they convey and communicate those experiences to others.

Seeing Voices A Journey Into the World of the Deaf

Reviews