About Kitty Fischer

New Book Focuses On Kitty Fischer Kitty Fischer, born to a Cajun family in rural Lousiana, first left home for education at the Louisiana School for the Deaf, then left her people altogether for the promise of a better life at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. Graduated, working as a librarian at her alma mater, married and raising a son, Fischer had little reason and little time to contemplate the people and places she had left behind. Her discovery that she had Usher syndrome, a genetic condition that causes both deafness and blindness, however, proved to be an unlikely catalyst toward revisiting her cultural roots, a powerful story movingly told by authors Cathryn Carroll and Catherine "Kitty" Hoffpauir: "Fischer in Orchid of the Bayou: A Deaf Woman Faces Blindness". In coming to terms with Usher syndrome, Fischer learned of the high incidence of the condition among Cajun people; suddenly, what seemed like disparate parts of her life began to come together. "Now, as an adult, I undertook to learn about the heritage that was my birthright and slowly managed to overcome some of the ignorance that occurs when one is cut off from one's hearing family by being deaf." Orchid of the Bayou is a story not only of personal triumph but also of the multiple cultural traditions - Deaf, Blind, and Cajun - that comprise one woman's genuinely postmodern identity.