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

Sidransky, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1563682877 ISBN 13: 9781563682872

Publisher: Gallaudet University Press, 2006

Synopsis

At last, Ruth Sidranksy’s groundbreaking book In Silence: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World is back in print. Her account of growing up as the hearing daughter of deaf Jewish parents in the Bronx and Brooklyn during the 1930s and1940s reveals the challenges deaf people faced during the Depression and afterward.

Inside her family’s apartment, Sidransky knew a warm, secure place. She recalls her earliest memories of seeing words fall from her parents’ hands. She remembers her father entertaining the family endlessly with his stories, and her mother’s story of tying a red ribbon to herself and her infant daughter to know when she needed anything in the night.

Outside the apartment, the cacophonous hearing world greeted Sidransky’s family with stark stares of curiosity as though they were “freaks.” Always upbeat, her proud father still found it hard to earn a living. When Sidransky started school, she was placed in a class for special needs children until the principal realized that she could hear and speak.

Sidransky portrays her family with deep affection and honesty, and her frank account provides a living narrative of the Deaf experience in pre- and post-World War II America. In Silence has become an invaluable chronicle of a special time and place that will affect all who read it for years to come.

About this title

About the Author:

Ruth Sidransky lives in Pompano Beach, FL.

Review:

"If there were a way, if I could, I would write this book in sign language." Ruth Sidransky was born in 1929, a hearing child of deaf parents; her first language is sign language. In Silence looks back at a childhood full of lush conversations told with hands that become gentle, funny, forceful, lucid. Her mother asks if colors have sound and Ruth, persuasively, gives them sound. Then her mother admits "To say truth, I never believe colors have noise, but nice to think so." Her father, Daddy Ben, instills a love of life in his daughter; his questions make her laugh, think, and learn. Lying on the grass in Central Park he doesn't believe Ruth when she signs the earth doesn't talk. "I deaf like old shoes, hear nothing. Not you. You listen. Learn earth's speech." She listens and understands: "He knew the earth's song and lifted me into its music." This is a story of living in two worlds - the hearing and the silent - and being a voice in both, of a home rich with love though financially poor, and of a religion that provided spiritual meaning, yet did not allow Ruth's father to have his bar mitzvah in the temple. Throughout her story, Ruth Sidransky gives us new perspectives of both sign and vocal language. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith

About this edition

• Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1563682877
• ISBN 13: 9781563682872
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352