My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood with Deafness (Creative Nonfiction Series) [Hardcover]

Lennard J. Davis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0252025334 | ISBN-13: 978-0252025334 | Publication Date: November 24, 1999 | Edition: 1ST

He remembers lying awake at night, every muscle rigidly alert, listening for intruders. He remembers frantically hammering on the door while his mother's oblivious footsteps passed back and forth inside. He remembers acting as a go-between in the marketplace, the doctor's office, the parent-teacher conference, the synagogue, the post office: a liaison between sound and silence. Lennard J. Davis grew up as the hearing child of deaf parents. In this candid, affecting, and often funny memoir, he recalls the joys and confusions of this special world, especially his complex and sometimes difficult relationships with his working-class Jewish immigrant parents. Growing up in a crowded one-bedroom South Bronx tenement, Lennard felt himself "a hearing outsider" caught between two worlds. Davis recounts childhood loneliness and fear, adolescent frustration compounded by embarrassment at his parents' deafness, and intellectual aspirations that ran counter to their compliant stoicism.He vividly describes his father's devotion to race walking and to televised baseball games, a trip to England with his mother on the Queen Elizabeth, and his successful efforts to relocate his family to a better apartment. He also recounts his problematic relationship with his elder brother, whom he both idolized and feared, and his college years at Columbia University, where (to his parents' chagrin) he participated in the historic campus demonstrations of May 1968. In a moving epilogue, Davis tells of his adult involvement with CODA (Children of Deaf Adults) and of coming to terms with a surprising realization. "Though I was hearing," he says, "deafness was in me." Gracefully slipping through memory, regret, longing, and redemption, "My Sense of Silence" is an eloquent remembrance of human ties and human failings.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

His identity as a child of deaf adults led Davis (English, SUNY at Binghamton) to edit and publish his parents' correspondence in Shall I Say a Kiss?: The Courtship Letters of a Deaf Couple, 1936-38 (Gallaudet Univ., 1999). Davis's new memoir focuses on how his parents' deafness affected him. He writes frankly about the difficulties he encountered, such as his inability to call his parents when he needed comfort during the night and his having to serve as their interpreter. He also discusses his embarrassment at his Jewish immigrant parents' poor working-class lifestyle during his childhood and adolescence in the Bronx. On the other hand, the author also infuses his writing with humor and the sense of the love and respect he developed for his parents and their accomplishments. In the epilog, he even implies that his upbringing contributed to many of his own successes. For instance, he mentions that his appreciation for language and strong communication skills are related to his early experience with sign language. Indeed, Davis's descriptions of the richness and complexity of sign language are the most fascinating portions of the book. Highly recommended for all public libraries.
-Ximena Chrisagis, Wright State Univ Libs., Dayton, OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

This is a man revealing himself, touched and startled by his act of exposure.... My Sense of Silence is an engrossing contribution to the genre. -- The New York Times Book Review, Margaret Diehl

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press; 1ST edition (November 24, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252025334
• ISBN-13: 978-0252025334
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #663,906 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect pitch, April 2, 2000

By 

Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood with Deafness (Creative Nonfiction Series) (Hardcover)

How to adequately praise an amazing memoir that is by turns comic, tragic, brave, immensely kind (never cloying) and seemingly photographically rendered? Davis presents the reader with how his young life looked, smelled, sounded - and most importantly, how it felt. It's a remarkable story of growing up in the now-lost world of the working-class Bronx (Tremont Avenue) of the 1950's, the much younger of two sons of smart, devoted, hard-working Jewish British immigrant parents, who are also "stone deaf," in his father's words. His mother lost her hearing in childhood, and so can speak and be understood by the hearing world; his father lost his as a baby. The circumstances surrounding these events are examined, too. Their shared disability both constricted and greatly enlarged his life.

Young Davis was deeply loved by his parents, but hyper-responsible and desperate for contact and life in the outside world. Readers are given the terrific minutiae of his life as a child - the weekly dinner menu at home, the interior of his family's apartment, life at school, the kindesses of teachers and his parents' friends in the deaf community, (lower case "d," , then) the neighbors, and the sights, sounds, smells of family life, including what he describes as a nearly religious object (because of course his father couldn't hear baseball on the radio): an Emerson Console TV. A very personal iconography of Television -- he develops a superhero alterego he calls "The Zenth" -- is part of the immense charm and humor of Davis' story. (Years later, he finds the exact same Emerson Console in a junk shop in upstate New York, another great scene in this book.) In the chapter "Honeymoon with Mom," he goes to England to visit relatives. The cozy domesticity and accepting, familial love - the music in every house, English candy - that he finds there is movingly described.

From the confines and immense security of his family's one-bedroom apartment Davis learns difficulty and differentness of being the hypervigilant hearing child - conscientious, smart, and emotionally desperate, sometimes - of Deaf parents. There are two brothers in this family, and their interesting but troubled relationship is examined with compassion and intelligence.

Davis is a careful writer with a wonderful and loving sense of the world. Not a word has been wasted. By the way, "Zenth" becomes a Professor of English. His generosity in revealing his life to us is immeasurable. The full picture of the old neighborhood is in itself an excellent historical narrative. You can smell the food - and hear the voices. It's also very funny at times. One of the best autobiographies I've ever read.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll love this book!, April 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood with Deafness (Creative Nonfiction Series) (Hardcover)

I have read several books of this gen-re, growing up with deaf parents. This one has its own, unique slant. I loved it, and I'm sure you will, too. It's fascinating when a person with parents of any particular group can look back at their childhood and explain things as they saw them through the eyes of their childhood. Mr. Davis describes his young feelings with insight and clarity and makes you understand exactly where he's coming from. It's a wonderful book, made even more special by the rainbow of seldom-heard, but easy to read, descriptive vocabulary used throughout.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reads like a novel..., October 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood with Deafness (Creative Nonfiction Series) (Hardcover)

This could become a classic. I really felt everything he wrote about. I felt badly for him - his childhood was rather bleak. However, his intelligence and good humor won the day and he has become a successful person, as a writer, in academia and his personal, family life. To me this shows that unique situations often produce unique people, and in this there is hopefulness for those of us who feel we grew up as "outsiders." Frankly, I think everyone fits into that category one way or another, so I recommend this book to...everyone.