Authors: Angela Elwell Hunt and Heather Whitestone
Publisher: Doubleday
Date of Publication: May 19, 1997
Edition: Hardcover (224 pages)
Listening with My Heart by Heather WhitestoneMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Heather Whitestome, Miss America 1995, tells her story from acquiring profound hearing loss as a toddler to becoming Miss America and beyond. Her honesty and forthrightness about personal issues and the larger ones surrounding deaf culture and community is refreshing. And I also appreciated her acknowledgement of her personal relationship with Jesus, along with her motivational approach to over coming and pursuing your dreams. This book has much to offer. It is definitely not a sugary or candy-coated look at attitudes about disability.
As a person who has been totally blind since birth, and someone who has also lived with ever increasing hearing loss for the last eighteen years, there is much I can relate to in this book. And I am very pleased at the author's view of the glass being half full and not half empty. The idea that people with disabilities are as individual as everyone else with different needs and circumstances is a constant refrain here, which I am also very pleased to see. As in the deaf community, the blind community often gets caught up in the trap of the 'one size fits all' approach to everything from education to independent living skills to Braille literacy. I thoroughly enjoyed Listening with My Heart, and will add it to my list to reread in future.
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