cover image Deaf Peddler: Confessions of an Inside Man

Deaf Peddler: Confessions of an Inside Man

Dennis S. Buck. Gallaudet University Press, $18.95 (136pp) ISBN 978-1-56368-096-0

This pedestrian memoir is a confessional narrative in the strictest sense. Buck, a deaf man with a graduate degree in computer science, confesses that from 1985 to 1996, he earned money as a peddler, working either part-time or full-time, in airports, restaurants and malls. Born in 1960 to hearing parents, Buck was doing well in his first year at Gallaudet University when a motorcycle accident left him paralyzed from the chest down. He eventually returned to Gallaudet in a wheelchair and completed his undergraduate studies--but, insecure and troubled, he soon found that he could make good money by distributing sign language cards to pedestrians and requesting a donation. In clear prose, Buck provides a brief history of deaf peddlers (who are, to this day, ostracized by most other deaf people), and tells his own story--the years when peddling was just a lucrative sideline (while he was employed as a neural network engineer at Wright Patterson Air Force base); his stint as a full-time peddler at Chicago's O'Hare Airport; his frequent run-ins with the police. He also vividly describes the rings of illegal immigrants, some deaf, who are smuggled into the U.S. and forced to peddle for the profit of their exploiters. But this account seems aimed at condemning his former life and the deaf men and women who still peddle. Wracked by shame about his own past, the reformed peddler boasts of his strong work ethic and argues against charity and social security programs for deaf people. B&w illustrations. (Sept.)