Mean Little deaf Queer: A Memoir

Galloway's book is, as you may have guessed by the title, no sentimental tear-jerker about being deaf in a hearing world. Rather, it is an all-out, no-holds-barred testimony to living live to the fullest in your own way and taking advantage of whatever life may happen to throw at you. Galloway's spunky attitude is refreshing and often hilarious, and her personality shines through in her memoir. She wastes no space on meandering by-the-ways, and she's always hitting the mark directly. Her family and friends provide constant support to the memoir, as she tenderly and sharply characterizes them; the cast is unbeatable. Highly recommended.

The life and mostly-lesbian loves of a woman who became (small-d) deaf at the age of nine are explored in this wry, David-Sedaris-like memoir.

Author Terry Galloway was born in post-WWII Germany; her father was a Cold-War era American spy. Galloway inherited his ability to act as if she were someone else. Despite her difficulties with hearing (even with hearing aids) and enunciation, Galloway devotes her life to theater, where she makes a fulfilling, if sometimes impoverished, life for herself. She also finds true love and some measure of mental stability, despite some severe episodes of dissociation and depression. As other readers have commented, the first half of the book is more engaging than the second. Still, I recommend this book.

This is a funny, electrical, no-bullshit tale by a wry and talented author. Terry Galloway navigates the waters that have drowned many a wannabe memoirist -- disability, sexual identity, and mental health among them -- with ease, evoking compassion but never pity. Whether she's describing the politics and hierarchies of Deaf culture (not to be confused with the world of the "little-d" deaf) or the challenges of appearing imperfect in the theater world, Galloway's observations are always spot-on and perfectly timed. If you like memoirs at all, read this one.

Mean Little deaf Queer is one of the best books I've read this year.

The title sets a very distinct tone--one that Terry Galloway manipulates almost perfectly. Unlike the majority of memoirs, I didn't feel as if she went out of her way to embellish her experiences. The direction of her narrative was less about defeating obstacles and more about becoming a highly creative and resourceful person because of them.

Although Galloway's story is exceptionally unique, I could relate to her. Of course, being deaf and queer exacerbates the normal human horrors and humiliations we all go through at some point--but still, the array of emotions is familiar. I appreciated her frankness and sense of humor.

I think some of the unfavorable reviews (on LT show more and other sites) stem partly from Galloway being compared to David Sedaris. Being a fan of both, I can see a few similarities between them, but they are two very different writers. She should be judged on her own merits.

Galloway is an excellent storyteller. If I hadn't received Mean Little deaf Queer for free from Early Reviewers, I still would've bought a copy. I recommend it. show less

As more and more memoirs are published, it becomes harder to find a unique 'hook.' Terry Galloway is both deaf and a lesbian, so it was intriguing to pick up this memoir if just to find out how those two characteristics influenced her life. It seems that being deaf was the more salient point of the memoir and her queerness was more of a secondary tale, but that doesn't take away from the narrative at all.
The book is very loosely chronological; in fact, most of the chapters are more like essays on a theme, skipping forward and back to tell a whole story. I enjoyed reading about Galloway's experiences in the theater and with other people who are disabled the most. An intriguing second project for Galloway might be to collect and publish show more the stories she alludes to in her final chapter about her Actual Lives cohorts, a performance group for those with disabilities.
I find her family and friends almost unbelievably liberal and accepting, more okay with her sexual identity than with her disability, and this strikes me as odd, but sort of refreshing; especially considering she spent almost all her life in the Conservative American South. However, I get the feeling that there was more discrimination she had to deal with than she relates; almost all the derogatory comments in the book are made about her deafness.
One thing I was disappointed by was that most of the cover blurbs and other advertising about this book portray it as 'hilarious.' I found very little of it funny and only laughed out loud once. It was still a great book, but I expected something slightly different from reading the promotional material. That is more a failing of the publisher than the author, of course, and others with a different sense of humor might actually find it funnier than I did.
Overall, I would recommend this to anyone who likes memoirs, especially people who, like me, are becoming increasingly bored with the genre. show less

Terry Galloway has lived an interesting life, and is a talented storyteller. In "Mean Little deaf Queer" she relates with humor and honesty her struggles with hearing loss and finding her sexual identity, and with determining what the labels "disabled" and "queer" have meant in her life. She conveys her depression and despair without ever sounding whiny, and her triumphs without sounding overly sentimental.
Her memoir is not totally devoted to her struggles however. My favorite parts of the book were the family stories - the kind that get told over and over when families get together about the eccentric aunt or the cousin you only whisper about or the strange thing that happened to grandpa that one time.
My one criticism is that because show more her story is not told chronologically, I was a little thrown off at first about the sequence of events. Even after I realized what she was doing, the style made the whole thing feel a bit disjointed.
Overall though, I enjoyed "Mean Little deaf Queer", and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys memoirs. show less

Terry Galloway wasn't born deaf. She lost her hearing slowly when she was nine, around the same age that she began realizing that she is a lesbian.

Her memoir was funny at times, but mostly it was a well-written story of her life, her family and their lore. Galloway's peeks back to her childhood were often heartbreaking, as were her stories of adulthood depression and suicide attempts. Her discovery and sexual experimentation with women recall Sedaris and Burroughs; they're real and honest but never exploited, never overplayed to shock her reader.

Overall, her story of self-discovery was interesting, funny, and well-worth the read!