Or she does-at least, I believe there's several good stories to tell-but she doesn't actually do that to my satisfaction. Leah Hager Cohen is a decent writer, but she doesn't have a strong story to tell here. The history of the evolution of the deaf culture and of the various controversies within the deaf community and between deaf and hearing groups was also so interesting, and was skillfully woven in among other parts of the story. Cohen, a hearing person, was immersed in the Lexington School and the deaf community much of her early life, but she doesn't pretend to understand everything, which made her writing all the more credible. As much as a person disconnected from the deaf community can, I feel that I gained some understanding of the trials of growing up deaf in a hearing family, and of the joy of being a deaf person surrounded by a supportive deaf community and culture. The story of the Lexington School, the students and staff, is really fascinating. This book definitely fit that description. For me, it is such a joy when an author can make a non-fiction book compelling enough to me that I read all the way through it, just as engrossed as if it were a novel. I had this book on my shelf for several years before finally getting around to reading it. This lack of any placing information caused me to ding it a star.

Also, it wasn't clear how or why the author had the access that she presumably had - in books like Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers or Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities the author gave a little introduction. It's in a third-person omniscient narrative, which makes sense in a fantasy novel, where the author has access to people's thoughts, but in a non-fiction book was confusing. But I couldn't give the book five stars, because I couldn't get past the narration. But two of the main students were a black, lower-class, deaf man and a Jewish immigrant woman, i.e., real people. If this were a sitcom, the character would be deaf, but would otherwise be white, middle-to-upper class, native-born, etc etc. So there was a great stroll down memory lane for me.Įspecially after just finishing Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, I found it really neat because the students have such intersectionally interesting lives.

Due to a a childhood friend who was deaf, I have a long-standing personal interest in deaf issues, and this book really helped me locate her in the context of what was going on politically at the time (a context of which I was blissfully ignorant).

It manages to do an excellent job of discussing various conflicting factions and attitudes that swirl around education of the deaf without taking sides or demonizing any one group. This subtitle is slightly misleading it's mostly the story of students at a school for the deaf in New York City.

Train go sorry inside a deaf world