Bridging Two Realms MICHIGAN (Michigan Radio) - The hearing world and the deaf world are pretty different from each other. Both have different kinds of languages: one is speaking-basked and the other is visual or gesture-based. They also have different cultural norms and societal values.

Brenda Warwick is from Adrian. Warwick can hear but her parents are deaf. She's known as a CODA or child of deaf adults.

She says going up to somebody you haven't seen in a long time who has gained fifty pounds in the last year and telling them they look fat, is not so cool in the hearing community. But that it's a very appropriate thing to do in the Deaf community.

Warwick says it was challenging for her to figure out what was and wasn't appropriate in those different worlds. As a kid, she was put in tough situations: not by her deaf family members, but by hearing people who were uncomfortable or unwilling to try and communicate with Warwick's deaf parents.

Once when she was 8, Warwick went with her mother to the mechanic to get their car fixed. A woman rang them up. Warwick says a guy from the back, obviously the woman's husband, screamed to the front, asking who was there. The lady quipped, just some deaf and dumb lady and her kid.

So she asked her mother what deaf and dumb meant. And her mom asked her where she heard that term. Warwick responded that the woman had said it. Her mother was furious.

After the car was done her mother proceeded to tell the lady off. She told the employee that she had a bachelor's of science degree and went to college, and how dare she call her dumb.

Keep in mind that is was actually seven year-old Warwick voicing all this for her mother. Warwick says that's the kind of thing a hearing child would never have to do.

Warwick says she struggled to figure out where she fit in. But it wasn't until she started meeting other CODAs, in her late 20s, at coda-conferences, that things began to click.

Tom Bull is a CODA and he's written about deaf parents with hearing children. He says CODAs find themselves constantly bridging that relationship between the hearing world, and the deaf one. He adds that everyday people still have a lot of ignorance about deaf people. And that CODA kids are always dealing with that.

Sherry Hicks grew up in a deaf household. Her mother, father, and sister were deaf. Growing up, Hicks wasn't sure if she belonged in the deaf world or the hearing one.

Hicks has witnessed first hand the ways in which deaf people sometimes get scammed. Hicks has seen things like deaf people getting charged twice when buying a new car. She says there's definitely a gap between the hearing world and the deaf one. And Hicks has used performance to bridge that gap.

For Hicks that's just a natural way to bring her two worlds together. Her performances combine ASL American Sign Language with music and storytelling. At her shows Hicks signs to songs like Blackbird.

She makes music into this 3-dimensional, visual, energetic thing. She tweaks the songs and stories so they're culturally-relevant to deaf people. And when she signs, it's expressive and emphatic. So it can be a new, visual way for hearing people to experience music and songs.

She says that many people may not have had an experience with a deaf person. And that there tends to be a fear associated with deafness. Hicks hopes her performances will help chip-away at that fear.

Besides being educational, Hicks says her performances are a way for CODAs to see them selves portrayed. Kind of like going to a Jewish film festival or an Italian film festival. Hicks says seeing yourself reflected-back can be a very healing thing.
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