It is interesting to see this situation from the eyes of Firoozeh Dumas. I do understand why she had felt the way she did and had wanted to change her name. I think I would personally feel the same. Majority of the time my last name is pronounced wrong. When I was younger, I would get embarrassed and never correct anyone that pronounced my name wrong. Now that I am older, I will correct people, although there are times when I just ignore it and go about my day. I also thought I would mention another perspective that I was thinking about. When I was younger, I struggled in English and talking in general. I was in speech for majority of elementary school. I had always had difficulty pronouncing words and saying them correctly. Whenever I mispronounced a word or couldn’t say it, I would get very embarrassed. Even today, if there is a word I feel I may have trouble pronouncing I avoid it. I will substitute a different word that is similar so I don’t even have to attempt to say the word, it is just easier to avoid the possibility of mispronouncing and embarrassing myself. Obviously, this would not be the case for the children that were poking fun of the names, but I wonder if some of the children were like me. If they had trouble with speech in general and were embarrassed that they could not pronounce her name. I know when I was a kid I would of just avoided her name so I wouldn’t risk that feeling of embarrassment.

I can understand both sides of this scenario. I understand that the professor just wants to help. He wants to give people back an ability they either once had or didn’t even have to begin with. On the other side I completely understand her perspective. I have a close friend that is deaf and has been majority of her life. She is very active in the deaf community and enjoys being a part of it. I think if she was given this opportunity to “fix” her hearing that she wouldn’t do it. She believes that she isn’t just “deaf” but that it has helped shape and make her who she is as a person. She talks about how sometimes it is really peaceful to just shut everything in the world out and be by herself to think. When she talked about how people see someone being “broken” if they are deaf, I understood what she was saying. Sometimes people automatically assume that if you have a disability there is something wrong with you and that you should feel bad. My son is autistic and I have had multiple people ask me how I handle it or how I’m “fixing” him. There is nothing to fix, everything about him is what makes him who he is. If he wasn’t autistic, he wouldn’t have the personality that he has. It isn’t something that is going to hold him back in life or something that he needs to change and fix.

I enjoyed reading this and found it very comforting. To me personally I feel like she is the most comfortable and enjoys using the English that she uses with her mom the most. She mentions that her mother’s English was never “broken” to her, that she could understand her completely fine. She also mentions that she uses this English with her husband. I personally think that if it is something that you use with the most important people in your life, it is probably what you are most comfortable with. I think this can be really beautiful in a way also. I have four-year-old twins and they have very delayed language. They also have their “own” little language. They understand what they are saying to each other and I think that connection is amazing. This quote was also really eye opening for me and I was able to see how my experiences have shaped me as a person in general. I related to how she talks about her mother’s language shaping her view of the world. When I was a child my mother’s language also helped shape my views. My mom was always left open ended questions that led me to think on my own. For example, instead of saying put your coat away. My mother would say look your coat is on the ground where do you think that might go. This would always make me think and almost gave me some independence.