02 - Between Two Worlds

Between Two Worlds

Business
Continuity

My Life as a Child of Deaf Adults

Published June 28, 2019
Gallaudet University Press

$29.95

Memoir | Print ISBN 978-1-944838-53-9

Ebook ISBN 978-1-944838-54-6

5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | 176 pages | 5 photographs

In this memoir, David Sorensen explores his identity as a coda, or a child of Deaf adults. Like many CODAs, he experienced being thrust at a young age into roles such as interpreter, confidant, and decision-maker. His story reveals a person seeking acceptance and belonging while straddling the Deaf and hearing worlds, and shows how he found reconciliation with both, as well as within himself.

Sorensen had a strained relationship with his father, who was an active leader and role model in the Deaf community and Mormon Church yet struggled to bond with his own son. Sorensen rebelled as a youth and left home as a teenager, exiled from the Deaf community.

After struggling to establish himself as an independent adult, he discovered that he wanted to return to the Deaf world and use his ASL fluency and cultural understanding as a mental health therapist and community advocate.

Now retired, he considers himself an ambassador between the Deaf and hearing worlds, as well as between the older and younger generations of Deaf people. Between Two Worlds: My Life as a Child of Deaf Adults shares the unique experiences of a coda and passes on the rich cultural past shared by the American Deaf community.

About David Sorensen

David Sorensen is a retired licensed professional clinical counselor who has worked with deaf people for almost forty years. Most recently, he was the community liaison for the Deaf Program at Desert Hills Residential Treatment Facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he was formerly Director of the Deaf Program. Sorensen also served as the director of the Deaf Group Home at La Familia, established the Southwest Services for the Deaf, and was a co-founder of the Laurent Clerc Elementary School for deaf students in Tucson, Arizona. He is working on a new book, Advocate for the Deaf.

He is available for consulting and for making referrals.