cover image In Silence: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World

In Silence: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World

Ruth Sidransky. St. Martin's Press, $18.95 (335pp) ISBN 978-0-312-04589-0

This autobiographical tour of the world of the deaf is conducted by the hearing offspring of a deaf couple. At the center of Sidransky's chronicle are Benny and Mary, the parents whose busy hands speak the rich language of Sign. Although their deafness caused Sidransky discomfort as a schoolgirl in Brooklyn and the Bronx, family life was filled with caring and laughter. Mary and Benny reveled in their daughter's ease in the hearing society, she drew from them and here pays homage to their spirit and to the signing that allowed them all such astonishingly rich and powerful communication. Sidransky, an advocate of signing who lectures about the deaf, cites the ``great mystery that resides within the crucible of hands.'' For the hearing, the book helps demystify the world of the deaf. First serial to Reader's Digest; Literary Guild selection. (Oct.)