Hard Talk

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A moving, patient-centered portrait of the social importance of speech, from a medical expert known for his humanizing explorations of health. Language comes to us through culture, environment, and family. Words embed over time, as we use our minds to comprehend them and then our mouths to say, mean, and own them. Without the ability to speak, or when talking becomes difficult, we face a challenge like few others, forced to reconnect with a world that assumes its communicators are eloquent vocally. In Hard Talk , Jonathan Cole takes a necessary look at the privilege of speech so we can better accommodate those for whom it presents problems. Cole creates space for people with a variety of conditions, including cerebral palsy, vocal cord palsy, cleft palate, Parkinson’s, and post-stroke aphasia, to describe in their own words what the experience of difficult speech is like. No struggle is the same. Each develops along its own axis of