Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg, Bantam, NY, 2008; 256 pages, ISBN 978-0553806885, hardback $24.00
This delightful memoire of a hearing son growing up in Brooklyn with his deaf parents gives insights into the attitudes and struggles of the deaf that still hold today. The author was born in 1933, when there were fewer accommodations for the deaf and more widespread prejudice and misunderstanding of them. The book is a tribute to his parents, their courage and depth of feeling, with the humorous and colorful incidents well outnumbering distressing ones. It also describes the burdens placed upon the hearing child as his father's interpreter to the hearing world:
When I was a small child, interpreting for my father while shopping in the chicken store and vegetable market made me feel important. However, even though my role as interpreter was a source of pride, it often left me feeling confused. Here I was, mouthing the adult words and concepts of my father, an adult, to another adult. But I was not an adult. I was a six-year-old child. And in those bygone times in Brooklyn, the role of a child was quite clear....
A kid's life was one of commands. There was no room for discussion between child and parent. Whine? Yes. Up to a point. Discuss? No. Never.
But unlike my friends, who unthinkingly knew their place in the scheme of things, I had a dual role. Their fathers could hear and thus did not depend on them for anything; mine could not. And when he was forced to interact with the hearing, my father was placed in the position of a child – ignored or dismissed. At those times my father expected me to transform myself instantly into an adult, one who was capable of communicating on his behalf, adult to adult....
Further compounding my confusion, in my guise as presumptive adult I often felt invisible. My father had programmed me to be a mere conduit for communication when I was interpreting for him: he spoke not to me but through me, like a pane of glass....
These polarizing reversals, so sudden and complete, were unnerving for me. One minute I was struggling with comprehending and deciphering, then translating and interpreting the adult concepts that had been communicated to me by hearing grown-ups. The very next minute my father was ordering me to be still, to stop jumping around, and to stop fidgeting – and telling me that a boy must always mind his father. Then he would gently but firmly take my small hand is his, and we would walk away from the hearing world, and I would be once again just what I was, his little boy. – pp. 31-33
The reader comes away not only with greater understanding but also with great affection for the people portrayed in the book, which is a pleasure to read. – Sarah Belle Dougherty