My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood With Deafness (Creative Nonfiction)

Rating:
Summary: A bit to narcissistic
Review: Davis writes extremely well and the images of his youth are quite powerful. He also does an excellent job conveying the difficulties of relating to his parents.

However, he can never seem to escape from a level of self pity. Though he ascribes this to his parent's deafness, often one wonders if his feelings are not rooted in his own deep classism. Much of what he describes as his youthful dificulties are not uncommon to find in the writtings of other children of working class immigrant jews. The embarassment he feels seems far more driven by this than his parents inability to hear.

I grew a bit tired of his deep self pity, perpetually describing himself as the victim of almost every circumstance.

In one poinient passage, he describes how his mother had once been courted by a wealthy english suitor whom she rejected. He wonders why she chose not marry this "catch." I myself wonder if davis would not have much prefered for this to be the case. It seems he would rather have been the child of the wealthy deaf than of the hearing poor.

While it is worth the read, other worthy texts by children of the deaf are far less self involved.

Rating:
Summary: A bit to narcissistic
Review: Davis writes extremely well and the images of his youth are quite powerful. He also does an excellent job conveying the difficulties of relating to his parents.

However, he can never seem to escape from a level of self pity. Though he ascribes this to his parent's deafness, often one wonders if his feelings are not rooted in his own deep classism. Much of what he describes as his youthful dificulties are not uncommon to find in the writtings of other children of working class immigrant jews. The embarassment he feels seems far more driven by this than his parents inability to hear.

I grew a bit tired of his deep self pity, perpetually describing himself as the victim of almost every circumstance.

In one poinient passage, he describes how his mother had once been courted by a wealthy english suitor whom she rejected. He wonders why she chose not marry this "catch." I myself wonder if davis would not have much prefered for this to be the case. It seems he would rather have been the child of the wealthy deaf than of the hearing poor.

While it is worth the read, other worthy texts by children of the deaf are far less self involved.

Rating:
Summary: Reads like a novel...
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but I wanted to know more...
Review: It was very enlightening to learn of a hearing individual's experience being raised by deaf parents...the author's first awareness of his parents' deafness, his alertness and response to nighttime sounds, his role as interpreter even as a small child, his excitement at attending school surrounded by those who could hear, his need as a young adult to escape his limiting home environment, etc. However, there were times during my reading when I felt the author strayed from what I perceived as the main intent of the writing, that is, to understand or empathize with the difficulties and problems of growing up in a somewhat restricted household (at least, in his mind). These were the parts of his story that were not as interesting, and I wanted to hurry through them to get to the portions where I learned something about the deaf experience. Otherwise, it was a very good book and well done. I did notice that the author at times used sentence structure reminiscent of his descriptions of "deaf speak". I wondered whether this was intentional or just a slip to his past.

Rating:
Summary: Reads like a novel...
Review: 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.