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In Silence, in Sound
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19743 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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3 / 1991 |
2,804 Words |
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Millie Brother
Millie Brother is the founder of Children of Deaf Adults
(CODA), an international organization that addresses the
bicultural experiences of hearing children of deaf parents
through conferences, support groups, and resource development.
She is a contributing author of Assessment of Hearing Impaired
People, edited CODA newsletter (1983-89), and has written
numerous articles for professional journals. |
IN SILENCE
Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World
Ruth Sidransky
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990
335 pp., $18.95
In her memoir In Silence: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World, Ruth Sidransky allows the reader a view of a hidden household and a hidden culture. This culture is hidden in households scattered throughout the world, but few people know of its presence. Of the few who are aware, far fewer know of the intricate staging of these homes. From the moment the story opens, one is struck by its intimate nature, the family bonds, and the importance of language in communicating between the hearing and deaf worlds.
If there were a way, if I could, I would write this book in sign language. I cannot. Signs do not transpose to the printed page; they are understood only in the flesh, hand to hand, face to face. And so I write in universal printed English, words to conjure the magic of my first language--words my mother taught me, words my father taught me--words told by the flick of a finger, the sweep of a hand. Sentences, liquid, rising not from the human voice but from the human body.
One immediately becomes privy to the myriad trials and triumphs of a deaf household as viewed through a hearing daughter's eyes. Early on in her life Ruth Sidransky became aware of her unique role as mediator between her deaf parents and the world of sound. It was a daunting task that she shouldered with courage and resourcefulness. Readers of this unusual memoir will not only find out how such families cope with everyday obstacles but they will be enlarged by Ruth's own story. She took difficult circumstances and distilled from them a personal mission to the communities of the deaf and hearing alike.
We view a different language, everchanging roles of parent as child educator and child as parent educator, and resourceful techniques for tracking baby sounds, such as a ribbon tied between mother and daughter at bed and cribside. In the background the public is a gawking, insensitive spectator to this unusual spectacle. Even the extended family often does not understand. Within all of this choreography we see a child adapt in her own way to this foreign terrain.
The challenge of school
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