Hearing Loss Magazine May/June 2013 - 39

Shouting Won’t Help: Why I—
and 50 Million Other Americans—
Can’t Hear You By Katherine Bouton
Reviewed by Janet McKenna

K

atherine Bouton, former New York
Times editor and current HLAA member,
relates her long journey from a sudden
deafness episode to a cochlear implant
while reviewing current research on dementia, regrowing hair cells and tinnitus.
Katherine Bouton, author of Shouting
Won’t Help: Why I—and 50 Million Other
Americans—Can’t Hear You (New York,
Sarah Crichton Books, Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2013) was amazed that
“48 million Americans have some degree
of hearing loss, 20 percent of the population.” You need not face hearing
loss alone, because people with hearing
loss are not alone. But like Ms. Bouton,
a New York-based HLAA member, they
deny the fact that they’re losing their
hearing. This book exposes readers to one
person’s trials of adult-onset hearing loss.
Ms. Bouton’s well-written and
extensively researched memoir traces her
sudden one-sided hearing loss as a 30-yearold writer for the New Yorker through its
slow bilateral decline until her present
profound hearing loss at 65. Her inability
to understand in noisy environments, on
the telephone, and in the busy world led
to forced retirement from her New York
Times editorship. The book is like a
Times article, only longer.

Why Did My Hearing Vanish?
Venerable HLAA members can nod in
agreement with Ms. Bouton’s history.
Her bumpy road to a cochlear implant
would be revealing to people with newlydiagnosed hearing loss. Friends, family,
and associates of such folks could better
understand the reactions and relationships
accompanying this disability after reading
the book.
Although late deafness experiences
are strikingly similar, we are all unique in
our reactions to hearing loss and how well

we do with technology. The author is
disappointed that she doesn’t do as well as
she had hoped, but individual outcomes
with cochlear implants and hearing aids
vary tremendously and many have great
success. She admits pestering her doctors
and audiologists for a cause (“idiopathic”).
Ignoring it for the first 20 years, “existing
in a relatively stable state of denial,”
she writes, “when it could no longer be
ignored, I spiraled into depression.”
Even after receiving a cochlear
implant from a top surgeon at a renowned New York hospital and pairing it with
a hearing aid in her other ear, she will s
till “guess at what’s been said, and often
get it wrong.” The cover artwork, which
I interpret as a woman treading water,
half in, half out, portrays this situation.
The extensive research is very
current, almost all from 2010 and later.
Ms. Bouton’s entertaining writing style
makes technicalities accessible to nonscientists. Particularly fascinating is the
saga of the trip to Turkey which she
thought brought on her first hearing
collapse. She explains inductive loops,
noise as a major cause of hearing loss
(“by far the majority of hearing loss in
America is noise-related”), the “ugly
stepsisters” of tinnitus and vertigo,
and assistive listening devices like FM
systems. She explains cochlear implants,
hearing aids and inner ears, although
a few illustrations might have clarified
them more.

Dementia and Regrowing
Defective Hair Cells
As if hearing loss isn’t enough to plunge
us into isolation, anger and grief, recent
research shows possible association
between hearing loss and dementia. The
author extensively interviewed researchers
at many academic institutions, particularly Johns Hopkins University about the
dementia connection and the University
of Washington, where promising work

on renewing damaged hair cells is
progressing.
For the person with hearing loss
who thinks they are the only one who has
it, each chapter concludes with “voices”—
interviews of others with sensorineural
hearing loss. Several are musicians, and
you might recognize some.
Ms. Bouton discovers a whole
world of hearing assistive technology and
coping behaviors upon joining HLAA.
At HLAA Convention 2011 and 2012,
she experienced hearing loops and a
congenial population of others who do
not hear well. She is scheduled to sign
copies of Shouting Won’t Help at the
forthcoming HLAA Convention
2013 in Portland, Oregon.
This book should be in every public
and medical library, in audiologists’
offices, and publicized at meetings of
HLAA and other support groups.
Until profound
hearing loss forced
her retirement, Janet
McKenna, MLS,
was a reference
librarian at the
North Tonawanda,
New York, Public
Library for 34 years.
She still could hear
the late Rocky Stone introduce his new
national organization, Self Help for Hard
of Hearing People, at the American Library
Association convention in 1982. Joining at
once, she says, “SHHH (now HLAA) saved
my sanity.” Mrs. McKenna now uses two
cochlear implants and belongs to the
HLAA Rochester, New York, Chapter.
May/June 2013 39
Hearing Loss Magazine May/June 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hearing Loss Magazine May/June 2013
