All Eyes: A Memoir of Deafness

"The interesting fact is that deaf people are so keen with their eyes, able to detect the slightest movement several yards away. Because they have little or none of the auditory sense, deaf people treat their eyes as the number one sense for communication, education, security, and even entertainment. Deaf people are extremely visual. They "hear" with their eyes. They read lips. They read sign language. They read facial and body languages. They read TTY's. They read closed captions. They become alert to blinking lights of special devices. Deaf people are all eyes. That's how I feel about myself; I don't know what would happen if I lost my eyes. And, how on earth could Helen Keller get by?" In Bainy Cyrus's All Eyes, she tells about her life growing up in both the deaf and the hearing world. Bainy first attended Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, MA, where she learned to speak and struggled with language development. It was typical for a deaf child to cope with delayed English language in the 1960s and 1970s. After seven years at Clarke, Bainy began to face difficulties in regular school but eventually overcame obstacles in the hearing world, at times with humor. She also relates the importance of her lifelong friendships with two girls Cheryl and Diane she met at Clarke, and how the different paths that they took influenced her as an adult.

Bainy Cyrus was born severely deaf in Norfolk, VA and learned to speak/lipread at an oral school in MA. She graduated from Virginia Tech in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in landscape horticulture and worked as a landscape designer for nearly 20 years before deciding to change careers. In 2004 Bainy achieved a master’s degree in counseling from Old Dominion University. She has worked as a job coach for people with disabilities since 2006. Her first book ＂All Eyes＂ was published in 2005 as an anthology titled ＂Deaf Women’s Lives: Three Self-Portraits.＂ Then ＂All Eyes＂ was re-published as a stand-alone edition in 2010 and won two silver awards in the autobiography/memoir category. The book’s website is www.alleyesbook.com. Bainy just published her third book ＂Della on Facebook＂ which depicts one year of Facebook postings and photos on her yellow lab puppy Della, followed by selective comments from her friends. To learn more about this new book, check www.dellaonfacebook.com. Bainy is now waiting to publish her employment dictionary ＂You’re Hired - Maybe＂ for the deaf/disabled, teens & young adults in transition, and Spanish-speaking people working in America. She now resides in her hometown Norfolk with her husband Steve and their Labrador Della.