Alandra’s Lilacs written by Tressa Bower is based on a true story of Tressa, a 19 year old mother and her daughter Alandra or Landy whom was born deaf. A year before Alandra was born, Tressa and her husband, Sug as she called him, suffered the loss of their first baby boy Lyn Alan. When Alandra was about five months old, her mother had suspected that she was deaf so she brought her to the pediatrician. Tressa was exposed to the three-day measles early on in her pregnancy which she knew caused deafness but the pediatrician told her it was her imagination or first time mother jitters. He also told her if she still expected it when Alandra was a year old, that she should bring her to an ear, nose, and throat doctor for testing. Tressa was angry with the doctor when she found out about Alandra being “stone deaf” (Bower…show more content… She asked her mom to call her Alandra and not Landy because her friends would not know her by “Landy” and she thought Alandra sounded more sophisticated (Bower 72). Around this time she received her first teletypewriter or TTY where she could communicate with all of her friends. That year she also had a decoder which would allow the dialog from the TV to show up on the bottom of the screen allowing Alandra to watch TV and enjoy it as any other teenager. Alandra was placed in a main stream school to fulfill her academic needs and her mother was “very persuasive’ (Bower 77) to have Alandra keep her grades where they needed to be so she didn’t have to be sent away to school again. Alandra also reached a point where she didn’t want to Out of all of these different programs that Landy had attended, I feel as though the “total communication” would be the most effective. Seeing as Landy would be able to match speechreading with signs (even though it was using ASL and not SEE) it would be beneficial to both herself and others when communicating with one
