Educational Media Reviews Online

A new marriage, a new home, and a baby on the way; the stuff that dreams are made of. John and Jenny Wu are building a beautiful future together until the day their world comes crashing down around them. Their daughter, Emily, is born with hydrocephalus, is profoundly deaf, and blind in one eye. Emily's Eyes, a chronicle of Emily's emergence into the world around her, is an extremely moving and powerful story of love and survival.

Surrounded by the unconditional love of her extended family, Emily gradually overcomes her disabilities. The program takes us through the Wu's daily existence, with video footage from past years interspersed to give a sense of continuity. Scenes of Jenny painting Chinese characters bridges the gap between the various segments beautifully, with the symbols depicting her feelings about the next stage of Emily's development. With the support and help of Rob Last, a teacher of hearing impaired children, the Wu's learn sign language and are able to communicate with their much loved child.

Living in Sydney's culturally diverse inner west neighborhood, the Wu's, Chinese immigrants, own and operate a pizza shop. Emily, now four years old, has grown up in the shop, where we see her interacting with and enjoying the shop's patrons. Attending a preschool for hearing impaired children a few days each week has helped Emily to blossom. The diagnosis of blindness and deafness hasn't doomed her to failure; instead, the program shows Emily as a bright, energetic, and happy child.

The audio, video, and editing of the program are all masterfully done. To give the viewers a sense of what it is like to be deaf, several minutes of footage is shown with no sound; this ingenious technique adds a real life quality to the issue of deafness.

This inspirational and compelling program is highly recommended for high schools, colleges, and universities with classes covering physical disabilities as well as those covering multicultural issues.