In Silence: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World

By Ruth Sidransky

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1563682877
• ISBN13: 9781563682872
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

In Silence: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World

Gave new insight to the development and importance of American Sign Language. A ugly picture of prejudice that teaches inclusion and acceptance of every human being. Heart-warming story of the relationship between two deaf parents and their hearing daughter. Made me laugh. Made me cry. Made me determined to treat all people respectfully.

In Silence: Growing Up Hearing In A Deaf World

In many ways, this book parallels "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" by Betty Smith; both are autobiographical accounts of the lives of two women growing up in Brooklyn, New York, although from entirely different ethnic backgrounds. Where Betty Smith's account opens the reader to a world from a strong Irish-Catholic heritage in turn-of-the-century New York City, Ruth Sidransky's account starts a bit later and reveals her Jewish faith coupled with the feeling of exclusion from the hearing world, on behalf of her dear parents. Nevertheless, hardships and love are plentiful for both women and their families, with Ruth's a bit more complex. Both deal with sensitive issues such as child molestation, poverty, overcoming diversity, etc., but are handled with care, even at times with humor. I would strongly recommend this book, particularly to students looking for insight into the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing world; additionally, it, like its counterpart, offers excellent historical, religious, cultural, sub-cultural, and ethnological perspectives of life in early to mid 1900's New York City.