My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood with Deafness

by Lennard J. Davis

The hearing son of deaf parents offers a candid, bittersweet memoir of growing up with his working class Jewish parents, recalling the happy times and confusion that marked their relationship.

Genres: Memoir, Disability Studies, Nonfiction, Biography, History

176 pages, Hardcover

First published November 24, 1999

Reviews

[ariel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book because I met the guy on the subway, and he was really kind. He told me where I could get a crash course in theory (I was reading Marx for Dummies, or something like that) and we talked about how he applied to Oberlin, and how good Edward Said's memoir was. He's an English professor who does disability studies. I found this book when I looked him up to find an article we talked about.

As lovely as that chance encounter was with a 2x Columbia alum who truly loves this institution, this memoir could have been written exclusively by his psychoanalyst. This maybe gets at my (unstudied) objections to Freudian analysis -- that everyone ends up telling their story in the same worn words, the same relatively creepy scenarios -- and there is something dreadfully boring in there.

It was a great disappointment to me, as a lover of memoirs. That said, the opening and closing sections on sign language as a first language (and how signing is capable of poetry, too, and how hearing people have 'deaf' voices and facial expressions they use exclusively for signing --Davis used his only for speaking to his father for instance -- was beautiful. It makes concrete the emotional and somatic shifts we make everyday between different registers of conversation -- the intimacy of talking to family versus the rest of the world, for instance.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The troubled and traumatic childhood of a CoDA, filled with anger, fear, loneliness, shame, abandonment, confusion, and embarrassment.

At times I felt affinity with Lenny, when he was forced to be an adult and interpret for his parents, when he had difficulty navigating the hearing world, when he could not express himself. I have felt his anger, still do.

A CoDA has one leg in the hearing world and the other in the Deaf world, with a home in neither. We are without a community that truly understands the trauma of our fractured nature, our solace is amongst fellow CoDAs.

[Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting look at intersections of growing up in a working-class, immigrant family in South Bronx with two deaf parents (though it can by no means define it for others) but also why is, like, every other metaphor/simile sex based? Also very disorganized and hard to follow a timeline, the author kept jumping around.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

CODA works through his trauma of his mother not hearing him cry in this memoir of life with deaf Jewish parents in the Bronx in the 1950s-60s.

[Mary Lou · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting peek into the life of a hearing child with deaf parents. Davis discusses aspects of his daily life that never would have occurred to me.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This memoir makes you think about your own childhood. Having grown up in the Bronx, many of the authors memories were similar to my own. If you are not familiar with the Bronx/NYC, you might miss a little bit. However, I found the author's description of how afraid he was most of the time, due to his parents' deafness, somewhat disturbing. So many things could have been different for him. His parents missed a lot of social cues at home that one wonders if this was because of deafness or something else. Something that their parents should have taught them.

[Julie-Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for my American Sign Language and Deafness II final when I was a junior in college. It was truly interesting to get the prospective of a CODA (Child of Deaf Adult). Of course, the ten minute SILENT presentation of the book had me not liking it so much, but all in all it was a great book.

[Mona Randall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a deaf son and deaf daughter-in-law. They have 2 hearing sons. This book, along with "In Silence" by Ruth Sidransky gave me a perspective from the hearing child of deaf parents. It was eye opening.

[Hannah Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Incredibly boring and disorganized.

[Barbara Adde · Rating 3 out of 5]

"My words are a stave thrown up into the darkness, a gesture of provisional solidity against all that melts into air."(p104)

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blunt, lyrical, disturbing, honest, unforgettable.