As the American Deaf community be- comes increasingly multicultural, the tasks of appreciating its diversity and weaving together the common threads necessitate that one first understand the commonalities shared by the di- verse groups within that community. One way to facilitate appreciation of di- versity is to examine life stories of Deaf people of color as reported by the me- dia. For example, in 1996 an article ap- A MERICAN A NNALSOFTHE D EAF V OLUME 149, N O .5, 2004/2005 375