|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Leah Hagar Cohen, Train So Sorry: Inside a Deaf World (Houghton Mifflin, 1994) Part memoir, part reportage, writer Leah Hager Cohen's celebrated first book delves into the sound of silence at New York City's Lexington School for the Deaf. Whereas deaf people in America face innumerable difficulties fitting into the world of the hearing, Cohen, whose father served as the school's superintendent, grew up on its campus yearning to join the world of the non-hearing. She learned sign language, and ultimately became a freelance translator. In Train So Sorry (which is a deaf expression for "missing the boat"), Cohen follows students whose varied experiences share a singular challenge: finding in difference and isolation the ingredients for cultural participation. Russ Rymer wrote for the New York Times, "Ms. Cohen both hears and listens, and what she relates to us is more than an insightful and much needed account of the culture and conflicts of the deaf, though it is that. Train So Sorryis a subtle personal report and a parable of understanding for a culturally Balkanized age. In her passionate regard for the "other," Ms. Cohen has given us reporting that reads, in its finer passages, like a love story—as intimate, tender and troubling a love story as any you're likely to hear." (March 13, 1994, Page 71) |
|
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||