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

Sidransky, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345374258 ISBN 13: 9780345374257

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1991

Synopsis

The author relates her bittersweet recollections of growing up in Brooklyn and the Bronx in the 1940s and 1950s as the hearing child of deaf parents

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: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0345374258
• ISBN 13: 9780345374257
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352