In Silence: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World - Hardcover

Sidransky, Ruth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312045891 ISBN 13: 9780312045890

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1990

Synopsis

Translating the syntax and structure of sign language into day-to-day English, this memoir recalls the author's bittersweet recollections of growing up in Brooklyn and the Bronx in the 1940s and 1950s as the hearing child of deaf parents

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Reviews

This autobiographical tour of the world of the deaf is conducted by the hearing offspring of a deaf couple. At the center of Sidransky's chronicle are Benny and Mary, the parents whose busy hands speak the rich language of Sign. Although their deafness caused Sidransky discomfort as a schoolgirl in Brooklyn and the Bronx, family life was filled with caring and laughter. Mary and Benny reveled in their daughter's ease in the hearing society, she drew from them and here pays homage to their spirit and to the signing that allowed them all such astonishingly rich and powerful communication. Sidransky, an advocate of signing who lectures about the deaf, cites the "great mystery that resides within the crucible of hands." For the hearing, the book helps demystify the world of the deaf. First serial to Reader's Digest; Literary Guild selection.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sidransky grew up in New York, the daughter of two deaf parents. This is her memoir and, most of all, her warm and loving tribute to the two very special people who were her parents. Her first memory, she tells us, is the memory of a word signed by her mother, Miriam, the word for "baby." Her father, Ben, worked as an upholsterer and believed that "the finger of God" was in his own fingers as he worked and as he signed. When she started school, Ruth was put in a class of retarded children because her language skills were so poor. Her mother, always full of pluck, stormed into the principal, who wisely recommended that she buy a radio so that Ruth could listen to spoken English. "If there were a way, if I could, I would write this book in sign language. I cannot," writes Sidransky, now a journalist who lectures extensively on the deaf. She has succeeded remarkably, however, in transferring the grammar and cadence of signing to the printed page. Very highly recommended.
- Marcia G. Fuchs, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312045891
• ISBN 13: 9780312045890
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 335