When Gina Oliva first went to school in 1955, she didn’t know that she was “different.” If the kindergarten teacher played a tune on the piano to signal the next exercise, Oliva didn’t react because she couldn’t hear the music. So began her journey as a “solitary,” her term for being the only deaf child in the entire school. Gina felt alone because she couldn’t communicate easily with her classmates, but also because none of them had a hearing loss like hers. It wasn’t until years later at Gallaudet University that she discovered that she wasn’t alone and that her experience was common among mainstreamed deaf students. Alone in the Mainstream recounts Oliva’s story, as well as those of many other solitaries.

In writing this important book, Oliva combined her personal experiences with responses from the Solitary Mainstream Project, a survey that she conducted of deaf and hard of hearing adults who attended public school. Oliva matched her findings with current research on deaf students in public schools and confirmed that hearing teachers are ill-prepared to teach deaf pupils, they don’t know much about hearing loss, and they frequently underestimate deaf children. The collected memories in Alone in the Mainstream add emotional weight to the conviction that students need to be able to communicate freely, and they also need peers to know they are not alone.

In 1975, federal legislation initiated drastic changes in the education of deaf and hard of hearing children. Public Law 94-142, later known as IDEA, proposed to provide the “Least Restrictive Environment” for all such children. In the years since, advocates for deaf and hard of hearing children have raised the alarm that mainstream educational settings can cause language and social deprivation for these children.

In Alone in the Mainstream, author Gina A. Oliva documents her experience as a “solitaire,” the only deaf or hard of hearing student in her school. Oliva felt alone because she couldn’t communicate easily with her classmates and because she had no peers who shared a similar experience. As an adult, when she began her career at Gallaudet University, she realized that she wasn’t alone and that her experience was shared widely with other mainstreamed students.  She decided to write about this commonality and invited other solitaires to reflect on their own experiences in emails and essays. Collective themes of isolation, low expectations, and low self-esteem emerged. Alone in the Mainstream blends Oliva’s personal narrative with the reflections of sixty other solitaires and makes the case that deaf and hard of hearing children need each other.

This twentieth anniversary edition is a reminder that little has changed for deaf and hard of hearing students in public school settings. Oliva brings this new edition up to date with observations, resources, and discussion questions that accompany her appeal for all deaf and hard of hearing children and their families to have access to sign language, to develop a deaf identity, and to be part of a deaf community.