Customer Reviews

In This Sign

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book has a strange impact on the soul. It's a story thatmight be described as about deafness, since it's the story of deafcouple, their hearing daughter, and their struggles through life. And yet the comment I hear most frequently about this book--from old and young, women and men, those who can hear and those who can't--is this: "I could relate." It was the same way with me. As I read this book I kept thinking..."that's like my family--thats like MY parents--that's like me." This book isn't JUST about deafness...it's about what separates us, about the walls we put up around ourselves and how to break them down. The characters aren't heroic and they aren't extraordinary. They live, go to work, go to school, cry, laugh, have children, make and lose friends...and you can't put their story down because it's too much like yours. I never wanted to read about life, just life, until I saw it so well portrayed.

I am a Sign Language interpreter. I am with deaf people every day. This book is a wonderful, accurate account of how many deaf people feel about the hearing world.
Hearing people will never be able to understand how frustrating a deaf person's life often is. It is hard to have to go through an interpreter for all your business and often private transactions.
This book beautifully told the story from both sides, and I highly recommend it to anyone.
Thank you.
Marsha Binau

We all have signs, in spoken language, in the way we behave, in the way we act..... And the signs are important to understand ourselves and to understand others.

In this book Joanne Greenberg tells the story of a deaf couple and their hearing daughter. The story is so sad, I have cried alot, and at the same time I learn so much from the book. Janice and Abel are both deaf and because of a misunderstanding early in their married life, a misunderstanding because they are unable to hear, their lives make a tragic turn. This change their lives dramaticaly, and takes away most of the beauty. Their daughter can hear, and becomes the link for Janice and Abel to the world of hearers, a world they don't understand and don't trust.

This is the story about Janice and Abel who live in their own world. A world of signs. Signs they are ashamed to show. They are quite young when they leave deaf school to marry, and the book is a heartbreaking story of their fight for their lives in the hearing world.

A book you will learn alot from, a book you can't put down once you have started.

Britt Arnhild Lindland

Since my son has lost more hearing and I have had a cochlear implant, I thought I would read more on the deaf culture. This book had plenty to say about the deaf world and what it is like to be deaf, but it is also one of the most depressing books I have ever yet to read. I am not exactly sure what the author intended to achieve with this book because instead of feeling admiration for the characters, I find myself angry and depressed. This should not be labeled as a fiction book.

Other than that, I will have to say, being deaf in the early part of the century also means lack of communication and poor education. This couple fought to survive through the Great Depression and WWII, struggled to raise a family (ironically, both children could hear) and still keep food in their bellies and clothes on their backs with a roof over their heads. They not only had one strike against them, being deaf, they had another strike against them when they were forced to repay $6,000 back to the car dealer who sold them a car. It took them over twenty years to pay it off and they struggled throughout that entire time.

This is an angry and bitter book and I wonder if the author has any personal experience with the deaf culture since she has written so convincingly of their thoughts and ideas. I may be deaf, but I have never signed and I also have never experienced the desolation of these characters. I do relate however, to the daughter's shame of her parents' deafness and their "loud" expressions of their hands when they signed. It has given me an insight of what life was like before I was born, what my life would have been like if I was born just thirty/forty years sooner. And it is not pleasant.

If you're interested in learning more about the deaf culture, this book would do it. But not in the way you might expect since it is a story about a family who fought against the odds to remain alive. It is also a great historical piece of information if you like that sort of thing. If you're looking for a good story, this one might not exactly fit the bill as it is depressing and bitter.

5/27/08

I bought this book because years ago I saw the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie "Love Is Never Silent," which was based on this book. I wanted a more "in-depth" look into the story.

I think this is the first time I liked a movie better than the book. While the book was good, it didn't give me as much of a background into the story as I'd hoped.

There were a few points of the story I wish would have been expanded upon, but I felt like I was left hanging a little bit.

I HAD to read this book for my ECE class. Some in the class loved it, I found it boring and a bit cruel. It does give some insight (no pun) as to how life was for the deaf, but as a novel? Nope. Subjective, keep review, that in mind.

If this book was published today as a brand-new release, rather than as a reprint, it wouldn't get very far because of the criticism that would be heaped upon the author and her publisher. The book takes a heavily stereotyped view of deafness. The painful aspect is the way the parents are portrayed - they make noise - lots of it, and they embarrass their hearing daughter, and she is also forced to act as their cultural interpreter, which is probably even more significant than the fact that her parents are deaf. They are foreigners in a strange land, where they don't know the customs, and this is an aspect of the book that adult children of immigrants will probably find meaningful.

'In This Sign' is written mostly from the perspective of a girl whose parents are deaf, and the burdens of the family are placed upon her shoulders, beginning with the deaf of her baby brother. She has to negotiate between her grieving parents and the funeral home director, who want to sell the family a lovely and expensive coffin. The parents tell their seven-year-old daughter 'Tell the man we only want a wooden box.' The man stares at the parents in disgust and says out loud 'A wooden box for your dead child! What kind of people are you?'

'In This Sign' is the flip side of deafness being a positive life experience. For every deaf person who is perfectly happy with the cards that life has dealt them, there is a hearing parent, a hearing child, a hearing sibling, who must become the voice between their deaf family and the hearing world.

I first read "In This Sign" three or four years ago, and just re-read it because I loved it so much. Although it is the best novel about deafness that I know (and better than anything I've seen on television or in the movies), it's far more than that: it's a saga about life, about radical cultural misunderstanding and difference, and about the struggle to build hope and stability in an alienating, uncaring world. And although the subject matter is deafness, I found deafness to be a metaphor that applies to all of us who feel different, and particularly those of us who feel marginalized or stigmatized by our difference.

But beware: this is a painful book. It's not a happy-ending sweetness-and-light story of the variety to which so many novelists have made us addicted. Instead, from the get-go, it's wrenchingly honest: it tells the truth of a Deaf couple's existence to survive, not just financially and socially, but emotionally. It shows the prejudice they face by a cold, misunderstanding. arrogant world, and it shows the coldness, misunderstanding, and (often) arrogance they develop in response--for self-protection and for their very self-preservation.

Although I am a big fan of Joanne Greenberg's "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," "In This Sign" is probably my favorite of her works. It captures a time and place and culture that allow so few of us access--especially those of us who are not deaf.

My only regret is that there is no sequel.

Only someone intimately familiar with the Deaf world would understand all of the subtleties portrayed in this book. However, as a Hearing person with extensive contact with the Deaf world, I read with fascination and dawning comprehension. The descriptions of the Hearing world from a Deaf perspective was enlightening. Granted the story is historic, opening in the early 1900's, portraying sweat shops, handicap discrimination, Union problems, WW2, the baby boom, the civil rights movement, and more. But it's a history of America from the eyes of Deaf Americans. Yes, it's wordy at times - but aren't words the very things that divide Deaf and Hearing? The wordiness is frequently eloquent and poignant and richly complex. It's also heartbreaking.

I saw the movie before I read the book. And so much more of the movie made sense once I read the book. A simple Hallmark 2 hour movie could not begin to portray the depth of character, emotion, and situation that the Ryder family experiences. Watch the movie if you're looking for entertainment. Read the book if you're seeking to understand.

This book is very wordy. It's often hard to follow. It's hard to believe that This is the inspiration for the movie "Love Is Never Silent" starring Mare Winningham. There's a lot of wording and info in here that isn't necessary. My advice, skip the book, watch the movie.