Alandra's Lilacs (review)

Media Review Alandra 's Lilacs by Tressa Bowers Gallaudet University Press Washington DC 5/1999 ISBN: 1-56368-082-3 We should be grateful when parents of deaf children strive to understand what deafness means to them and their families, are adept at describing their experiences, and write about them. In Alandra's Lilacs, Tressa Bowers tells us what her life has been like as the hearing mother of Alandra, her deaf child. In seventeen chapters with catchy titles like, "Stuttering with My Hands," she tells the story chronologically . We are there at Alandra's birth, and over the course of the book, Bowers's life as the mother of a young child and then a teenager unfolds to us. By the end of the story, Alandra has married, and Bowers is the grandmother of three children . The book presents a developmental perspective, also, of a very young mother who, right from the start and for the next 25-plus years, seeks to gain knowledge, skills, and understanding about deafness, communication , and Deaf culture. Her goal is to live a life with her daughter full of the love and excitement she feels about this child. Over the years, even though she experiences significant loss and suffering—the death of two children in infancy, a divorce, and bouts of depression—this mother shows herself to be an optimistic, highly-motivated individual who works hard to grow and to find the way to that life. Right after Alandra's hearing loss was diagnosed at 11 months, Bowers looked for education programs available to her daughter, but none was provided in her local area. At that time (1968) states were not required to offer services to children under three years of age who had disabilities . From a friend, Bowers learned about Central Institute for the Deaf (CID) in St. Louis, 30 miles away, and she began the process of applying for financial aid so Alandra could attend the parent-infant program there. After weeks of filling out forms, obtaining documents from doctors and audiologists , and then waiting, she still heard nothing from the Illinois Department of Education. One evening, she decided to call the governor of Illinois and tell him her plight. Whoever she talked with must have delivered the message, because in a few days she got the aid, and Bowers and Alandra were enrolled at CID. For the next two years, mother and daughter struggled for effective communication using the oral method advocated by CID, where not even pointing was permitted. "Pointing was forbidden, but I could cast my eyes in the direction of the object I was talking about." (p. 32). This mother believed in the oral method and worked diligently with Alandra's speech at home in front of a mirror. But she often felt more like Alandra's teacher than her mother; their communication was constricted and often frustrating, not leading to the development of the intimate motherdaughter relationship she very much wanted. When Alandra was five, the family relocated. She enrolled as a residential student at the Illinois School for the Deaf in Jacksonville-a Total Communication program. Bowers reflects : "I believe that leaving my fiveyear -old daughter at a residential school was the most traumatic event I experienced as a result of her deafness ." (p. 43). Not giving up her belief in Alandra's ability for effective speech, Bowers began what would be a long, slow process to learn sign language. On the weekends, I did her laundry and talked to her any way I could. What surprised me most about these conversations were the things that she talked about. Many of them were experiences we had shared before she had the language to talk about them. All those memories had been locked away just beyond my reach . . . Each week, Landy taught me new signs and I tried so hard to remember them. . . p. 46. In 1975, when Bowers was 26, her 10-year marriage ended, and she and Alandra moved in with her parents. She eventually returned to school to earn her GED, then went on to a community college on work-study, a second marriage, and over time, a successful career in management at...