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The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa

Josh Swiller

Paperback | Pages: 265 pages

Rating: 3.88 | 755 Users | 112 Reviews

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Original Title:	The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa
ISBN:	0805082107 (ISBN13: 9780805082104)
Edition Language:	English

Narration In Favor Of Books The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa

A young man's quest to reconcile his deafness in an unforgiving world leads to a remarkable sojourn in a remote African village that pulsates with beauty and violence

These are hearing aids. They take the sounds of the world and amplify them." Josh Swiller recited this speech to himself on the day he arrived in Mununga, a dusty village on the shores of Lake Mweru. Deaf since a young age, Swiller spent his formative years in frustrated limbo on the sidelines of the hearing world, encouraged by his family to use lipreading and the strident approximations of hearing aids to blend in. It didn't work. So he decided to ditch the well-trodden path after college, setting out to find a place so far removed that his deafness would become irrelevant.

That place turned out to be Zambia, where Swiller worked as a Peace Corps volunteer for two years. There he would encounter a world where violence, disease, and poverty were the mundane facts of life. But despite the culture shock, Swiller finally commanded attention--everyone always listened carefully to the white man, even if they didn't always follow his instruction. Spending his days working in the health clinic with Augustine Jere, a chubby, world-weary chess aficionado and a steadfast friend, Swiller had finally found, he believed, a place where his deafness didn't interfere, a place he could call home. Until, that is, a nightmarish incident blasted away his newfound convictions.

At once a poignant account of friendship through adversity, a hilarious comedy of errors, and a gripping narrative of escalating violence, The Unheard is an unforgettable story from a noteworthy new talent.

Details Appertaining To Books The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa

Title	:	The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa
Author	:	Josh Swiller
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 265 pages
Published	:	September 4th 2007 by St. Martins Press-3PL
Categories	:	Cultural. Africa. Autobiography. Memoir. Nonfiction. Travel. Biography

Rating Appertaining To Books The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa

Ratings: 3.88 From 755 Users | 112 Reviews

Judgment Appertaining To Books The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa

This book is short and easy to read, but it took me a month to finish. I wanted to like it and towards the very end I started to, but I just couldn't enjoy it very much.There was a superficial quality to the whole work. It often seemed like Josh was just glossing over details, periodically making a "realization" about deafness, culture, and the miracle of every day of life, which would last for a paragraph or two and then subsequently never be mentioned again. Likewise, there was little to no

This was a really great book. I have had it for about 2 years and never really felt like picking it up. I am very glad that I did though! It is about a deaf American who joins the peace corps and is stationed in a village in Zambia in order to teach the people to dig wells. Not much digging goes on, but the story of how he spends his 2 years there is fascinating. A very revealing story about African culture today.

I wasn't sure what I was going to be reading about when I started. I thought it would be about a young man's journey to helping African children who were deaf. He does some, but his story is more about his time spent in one particular African village. It's kind of a coming of age story.

My son is currently in the PC, in Zambia, in the same area, and we are going to visit in a couple of months. I found the book somewhat frustrating - things I wanted to know more about were glossed over and much of the book seemed to be about how the author wanted to be seen rather than about what was going on. I kept thinking that it was other people in the book who really had stories to tell. My son told me about the book saying that it was one of the few things available to read about the area

This book took me a long time to read. I think it is because I didn't love it. Josh Swiller joins the Peace Corps and is sent to Zambia to drill wells with the local villagers. Josh is completely deaf, but he can hear some with his hearing aids, and lip reads. Mununga is a remote village that has no running water electricity. Unfortunately he alienates the chief his first day in Mununga, and that is his first mistake. Josh is really unable to get any wells drilled because of his feud with the

At age 23 Josh Swiller joined the Peace Corps and arrived in Mununga, Zambia, on the Zaire border, to help villagers dig wells. Swillers idealistic vision of improved sanitation and healthcare soon evaporated in the face of corrupt government officials, violent vigilantes, and rampant poverty. Despite the desperate circumstances, Swiller found something he had been searching for since childhood a place past his deafness: The fact that I was a white man was so astonishing to the villagers that

What a powerful story. Josh Swiller relates his experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia in the early 1990s, but he also happens to be deaf. I didn't know what to expect when I opened this book...but what I got was exceptional. Though our Peace Corps experiences have little in common - it is definitely hard to draw parallels between Swiller's African village life and mine in urban Eastern Europe - he really gets at the root of the volunteer experience. That no matter who you are, or who