Customer Reviews

Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I really enjoyed this book. Leah Hager Cohen has managed to create a portrayal of the Deaf Community which is thought provoking and interesting. Anyone with a connection to the Deaf Community ought to read this book. Cohen comes from an extreme viewpoint of inclusion being wrong for the Deaf Community and Deaf children. However, in this book she is able to portray, in a passionate way, the importance of the Deaf Community for Deaf people without pushing her views on inclusion. Cohen creates an atmosphere of warmth and companionship within her text that speaks out in a louder voice than any argument on the street against inclusion

I really enjoyed this book. Once I started it I could not put it down. Leah Hagar Cohen described the school, the deaf students and their teachers, her family all so well that I felt like I was there with her walking down the school's corridors. I really felt like I got to know the people that she focused on and appreacited her sharing her own personal story about her contact with the deaf community.

Train Go Sorry by Leah Hager Cohen gives an interesting view of multiple peoples lives connected to the deaf world. The book reveals several stories that take us down the path the deaf community has taken to get to its present state and how at the same time the deaf culture is on the decline due to technology advancements i.e. cochlear implants and hearing aids.

The title is a little confusing for people who don't know much about the deaf community and ASL. Train go sorry essentially means "you missed the boat". The book tries to portray how the people in the deaf community or those around them have at times have missed the boat throughed failed meetings with family members, relationships, and everyday interactions with the hearing world.

This book at times jumps around and might make it difficult for some to read. However, when you look at it from an ASL lifestyle point of view the book seems to sense. Just as the deaf communities lives are jerky and not in a predicatable order at all times so is this book and I believe it is a reflection of that it is trying to show all the facets of the deaf community in any way possible including the order of the book.

If you would like to learn more about the history of the deaf community and ASL this book is for you. However, I would caution that technology has advanced and time has gone on for the ASL community. If you want to be current on these subjects I suggest doing some research. I enjoyed the book but I probably wouldn't have picked it out to read on my own it wasn't a required reading for a class.

I give the book "Train, Go, Sorry," a mixed review. In exploring Deaf culture and education, I liked how author Leah Cohen followed the story of two deaf students (Sofia Normatov and James Taylor) as they attend Lexington School for the Deaf (in NYC). These two students not only had to deal with deaf culture, but also with their heritage. Sofia is a young Jewish girl from Russia, and James comes from the housing projects in the poorer part of NYC. Each deals with the culture gap between their school and their family life, and each eventually is forced to choose one or the other. I also enjoyed Cohen's personal insights into her fascination with sign and her father's and grandparent's lives, as they dealt with the Deaf culture the surrounds them.

There is a good amount of history about Deaf culture and sign language within this book. The book starts out by painting the picture of deaf education a couple of decades ago (when Lexington was an oral school and the author was young girl) and the picture painted is a bit bleak. I felt like I was stuck in a bad movie from the 70's through the first half of the book. As Cohen slowly works towards more recent times with the emergence of Deaf pride and signing in the schools, a better and brighter picture is painted. However, I would warn the reader that a lot has happened since this book was published; especially with regards to cochlear implants (which could be a whole other book within itself). By far this is not an unbiased book, but the topics discussed and stories shared in "Train, Go, Sorry" are important, and it would be great to see a follow-up to the discussions that this book starts.

This book is a personal overview and interpretation of several issues of concern in deaf education. The author, Leah Cohen, was born into a hearing family who worked and resided at Lexington School for the Deaf in New York City. In this book, she explores her connection to the school through the stories of her father's parents, who were both deaf, and her father, who was superintendent of the school when this book was being written. Cohen also looks at the school from the point of view of two students, Sofia Normatov and James Taylor. She describes some of the accomplishments these students have achieved despite tremendous challenges. Sofia was a recent immigrant from the USSR, and must learn ASL and English if she wants to go on to university. James hails from the housing projects and receives very little support from friends and family for his academic endeavors. Nevertheless, he is determined to pass the Regents Exam and earn an academic diploma so that he will have the opportunity to continue his education. Cohen also describes her own experiences learning sign language and then developing her skills as a translator. The book includes some black-and-white photos of the main characters described in the text. There is no index or bibliography.

Worked into the chapters telling stories about Lexington School, its students, and staff are many issues that are central to the deaf community today. One of these issues is the question of mainstreaming deaf children into public education. Many administrators (and hearing parents) believe that deaf children should be treated like other handicapped children and enrolled in regular classes in hearing schools. These people cannot seem to comprehend how misguided this policy is. Deaf children, especially those born to hearing parents, need the company of other deaf children in order to learn the language that is best suited for them. Only in the company of other deaf children of varying ages and deaf adults is it possible for deaf children to pick up on Deaf culture, the culture that will understand them for who they are and not consider them handicapped. A deaf child who is mainstreamed is likely to spend most of his or her childhood isolated, unable to communicate effectively with peers or develop native fluency in sign language for effective communication with other deaf people. Schools for the deaf, on the other hand, provide rich opportunities for deaf children to develop socially as well as learn in classes that are thoroughly adapted for their skills and needs. In her chapters touching on the question of mainstreaming, Cohen reports the discussions at board meetings and the frustration on the part of educators for the deaf in getting education departments to listen to their arguments.

Cohen discusses at some length the topic of cochlear implants. Not only does she explain why those in the Deaf community see no use for them, but she also points out how they can harm the user by eliminating residual hearing they might have. In her material about the student James, she points out how little supposed hearing specialists know about the implants.

One of the largest and perhaps somewhat understated issues in the book is the question of the role of ASL in deaf education. I was shocked to read that some teachers at the Lexington School, at least in the early 1990s when this book was written, still had no fluency in ASL. How in heavens name could they communicate with their students? As Cohen explains, Lexington was founded as an oral school, and it has only been quite recently that students were finally allowed to communicate with each other in sign. Cohen was born into a family where her father and grandparents were fluent in sign and used it as their primary means of communication, and she spent the first 7 years of her life living in a residential school for the deaf, haunting the hallways and even attending preschool classes with deaf children. With such an upbringing, fluency in ASL should have almost been her birthright. Instead, with ASL banned on campus during the time she lived there, she did not start to learn sign language until her college years, by taking private lessons. (Perhaps this is why she was completely ignorant about deaf applause, and mistakenly attributes its invention to the Deaf President Now campaign at Gallaudet in 1988. While she claims that the shimmering hand applause of the deaf spontaneously appeared at Gallaudet in 1988 and from there spread rapidly around the world, I saw it in action in 1985-86 in deaf schools in Finland. I suspect it has been part of Deaf culture for quite a bit longer than Cohen was aware.) In her book, she notes that "train go sorry" is a deaf idiom equivalent for "missing the boat". The truly tragic "train go sorry" in this book is the fact that Cohen was denied learning sign language as a child, and that deaf students anywhere studying in deaf schools still find teachers in their classrooms who do not know and use ASL. While oral skills have their place and should be a part of the deaf curriculum, they should constitute a minor course of study, and not the medium of instruction.

Train go sorry is a story told by Leah Cohen about the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York City. This book delves into the Cohen family history and the dynamic between a hearing father and his deaf parents, and the relationship between the hearing daughter, Leah and her father who is overly involved in the Lexington School for the Deaf. The book explores the history of the school as well as touching on Deaf culture, American Sign Language, and controversial topics such as cochlear implantation.

This book introduces you to some integral students with complex stories to be told. We will follow these students throughout their time at Lexington. Getting to know these student and the difficulties they persevere through was my favorite portion of the book.

I occasionally became frustrated by the skipping around of chapters and the complete digression some of the chapters take from the book's intentions. Needless to say I enjoyed the book, and it is a nice quick summer read.

I will preface this review by stating that I was required to read this book for a graduate course called "Managing the hearing impaired child" this summer. Nevertheless, it was a decent read and for the most part I enjoyed it. Most pleasureable for me was learning about deaf residential school life through the eyes of the superintendent's "hearing" child. There was a lot of interesting family history (her paternal grandparents were deaf) as well as history about the school and how it evolved over the years (mostly oral background). I truly enjoyed reading about the personal stories of two underpriveledged deaf high schoolers who had different but equally difficult obstacles to overcome in order to find a future for themselves in the "hearing" world. Some chapters were a bit boring and felt laborious to get through at times but they were short so not to worry. Overall it was mostly easy to read and there were even some tearjerking moments. If you want to learn about the deaf culture in general, or the politics surrounding it (such as mainstreaming and cochlear implants), and even a bit about ASL and interpreting, this is a good book for you.

The book is marvelous for its accurate insights into Deaf culture. It uses a Deaf residential school setting as the basis for the many subplots so we get an inside look at deaf people - It is an ingenious device. We see the various aspects of Deaf culture from many points of view as Ms. Cohen explores issues through the various characters in the book. All the characters are very interesting and fully drawn. You feel as though you know each one of them when you're done.

I am a hearing man who has been involved in the Deaf community for over 30 years. I teach ASL at a college and have read just about all the books available on Deaf culture. This is the book that I now require for my level two students. It gives so much "inside" information about deaf people. And she does it through the many fascinating lives of each character, most of them deaf, a few hearing.

If you are an ASL student or know a deaf person, you should definitely read this book. If your professor doesn't now about this book yet, tell him or her to read it. Even if you've never met a deaf person I think that you will find this to be a great read. It is breezy yet poignant and you keep turning the page to see what happens next to each person involved.

This book is written by a woman who loves language. She uses it with precision and beauty. It is worth reading, even if you have no interest in the deaf community, for the mastery of the writing. If you have an interest in deaf culture, if gives a precise picture of a time and a struggle which is beautifully balanced between a personal and a wider cultural setting.

About one-third of this book is about growing up Jewish, one-third is devoted to just plain stories of growing up (stuff we all did...) and a third is about growing up as a hearing girl inside Deaf culture, as the daughter of the administrator of a school for the deaf. The only interesting part is the Deaf bits, the insight into deaf students striving to create a sense of community at school when almost all of them came from hearing families. Their field trip to Gallaudet University is triumphant for most of them, and the featured debates over ASL, cochlear implants, oralism and mainstreaming are all major issues in the Deaf community.

I wish there had been more about this aspect, as it's difficult for a hearing person such as myself to get information on this parallel culture that lives among us.

The rest of the book is unremarkable, somewhat plebeian and wouldn't have held my interest by itself. Therefore I give the book 1/3 of a full recommendation, plus an extra 1.4 stars for the thought-provoking analysis of what it means to be Deaf.