What's That Pig Outdoors?: A Memoir of Deafness

This book tells the story of a deaf man - his growing up, his college and adult years and forging a career. it is not maudlin, or sad. He writes well, and is the first book that i have read that pinpoints the problem of the deaf person learning to think in language. The chapter explaining the method for which he learned to read and to write was fascination. Should be required reading for all teachers, becuase this method would be useful for teaching anyone who is having problems learning to read. The author does not sign, and has never learned to sign. He has actually never entered the subculture of the deaf, and lives only in the hearing world. This is an interesting divide, since we hearing people have no knowledge of this division. This is a short book, and easily read in an afternoon. It is not a gripping adventure story, but still i recommend it highly. We must bridge the gap between people, and not many deaf people are able to write books about their own experiences. For that reason, i feel it is an important book. Also, i recommend Crashing Thru, the book about Mike May. He became blind at the age of 3, and had a successful and fulfilling life without sight, and then had his vision restored as an adult. Read them both, and expand your own world.

This book will help those of you, who are deaf, accept yourself as a deaf person. Read all the way to the end of the book, and you'll understand, for the first time in your life, that it is perfectly okay to be who you are. There will be others who will always tell you who you are, what you are supposed to do, and that you are to be ashamed of the choices that your parents made for you, or the choices that you have made for yourself. The book also shows you the extreme importance of listening to your guts, to follow your heart, and to be comfortable in your own skin, in spite of today's shame-based deaf world that likes to put labels on you. How liberating and how wonderful it is to be free, to be who you are and to move on, firmly, with your own life.

Love this story so much recommended to teacher of the deaf and deaf students.It is a wonderful story about a hearing impaired man who goes through life compsating his deafness through school age and in the newspaper business as a written. He became deaf at age 3 so he already developed language.

Maybe twenty years ago I read this for the first time. The book still sits by my desk. Occasionally I recommend it to a patient.Sure, the book tells about one man's experience of living life while deaf. But mostly it's about living life, as we all do, with our own individual challenges.You'll probably go through it pretty fast. Henry Kisor writes with grace; he has a unique story to tell.

On April 12, 2011, Henry Kisor spoke to a rapt audience at the St. Charles Public Library in St. Charles, IL. An inspiration by example, Henry showed us all who he is, a good man with many life riches who also happens to be deaf. Inspired to buy and read his memoir, What's That Pig Outdoors?, I finished reading "Pigs" in two days even though I lingered over the words. They were inspiring words, words to consider and think through. Henry writes without bitterness, but with joy about a world that has a lot more going for it than we give it credit for, without falling for the easy sarcasm pervading literature. The story is perhaps best described as honest, which is a characteristic far too absent from many memoirs. I am glad to have met his wife, Debby, in person, for her story is told here, too, most powerfully by Henry's description of the emotions shown during the events of thier lost third child. Humor, struggle, failure, and success abound. Most of all, though, hope. Henry's story is a gracious one, giving credit where due, to his parents, teachers, colleagues, and us - society in general. For all our flaws, we're not so bad upon close examination. Thank you, Mr. Kisor, for the beautiful story that is What's That Pig Outdoors?, for sharing your life, and reminding us without preachiness, what we need to hear. Isn't that an irony? That Mr. Kisor, with his deaf ears, has demonstrated perhaps the best capacity to listen a person can have, throughout the years of his life.

I have only just caught up with this book 14 years after it was published. Kisor is very good on how he managed a life as a deaf person who operates orally in a hearing world, and manages to be quite tactful in dealing with the subject of the Deaf -- people who use sign language. He is perhaps more tactful than he really should be in discussing the ignorance of a lot of educators of the severely hearing-impaired and the rather patronizing "poor-you" attitude they often take.I can say this because I have only a little more hearing than Kisor -- and for the same reason, meningitis at the age of 3. I am ten years older than he but remember well some of the stages he describes so accurately and honestly. Like him, I was lucky in my early teachers and in being kept away from schools for the deaf.It does need to be said that cognitive psychologists and students of child language have learned a great deal about child language development since Kisor and I were children and even since his book was published in 1991. Their progress dates from Noam Chomsky's destruction of behaviorist notions of language almost 50 years ago. I hope very much that things have changed significantly in the education of the deaf and severely hearing-impaired.With luck, students will recognize that Kisor is describing a bygone era. But it is an era that was and is still well worth describing.

It was boring.

I read this book for an ASL class in college and wow. This book is great. An amazing autobiography written by a deaf man, Henry Kisor who has managed to exist in a hearing world as a deaf man strictly by lip reading. He has been a journalist and this is amazing to me. A wonderful story written in the point of view of a deaf man and his lifelong journey to success and living in the hearing world. Reading this book has made me take a look at my life and made me feel as if I could do anything.