Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love

By turns heart-tugging and hilarious, Myron Uhlberg’s memoir tells the story of growing up as the hearing son of deaf parents—and his life in a world that he found unaccountably beautiful, even as he longed to escape it.

“Does sound have rhythm?” my father asked. “Does it rise and fall like the ocean? Does it come and go like the wind?”

Such were the kinds of questions that Myron Uhlberg’s deaf father asked him from earliest childhood, in his eternal quest to decipher, and to understand, the elusive nature of sound. Quite a challenge for a young boy, and one of many he would face.

Uhlberg’s first language was American Sign Language, the first sign he learned: “I love you.” But his second language was spoken English—and no sooner did he learn it than he was called upon to act as his father’s ears and mouth in the stores and streets of the neighborhood beyond their silent apartment in Brooklyn.

Resentful as he sometimes was of the heavy burdens heaped on his small shoulders, he nonetheless adored his parents, who passed on to him their own passionate engagement with life. These two remarkable people married and had children at the absolute bottom of the Great Depression—an expression of extraordinary optimism, and typical of the joy and resilience they were able to summon at even the darkest of times.

From the beaches of Coney Island to Ebbets Field, where he watches his father’s hero Jackie Robinson play ball, from the branch library above the local Chinese restaurant where the odor of chow mein rose from the pages of the books he devoured to the hospital ward where he visits his polio-afflicted friend, this is a memoir filled with stories about growing up not just as the child of two deaf people but as a book-loving, mischief-making, tree-climbing kid during the remarkably eventful period that spanned the Depression, the War, and the early fifties.

From the Hardcover edition.

Share your thoughts on the Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love ebook with other internet viewers!

Title of ebook: Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love
ISBN: 9780553906271
parent-ISBN: 9780553806885
Publisher: Bantam
Internet download file size: 621 kb
Released online for download: 02-03-2009

NEW! Sales rank: 18664

Format

Encrypted

Sku

ISBN

File size

Security

Printing

Copying

Read aloud

Devices

Mobipocket

Yes

9780553906271

621 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirements

Download reader

eReader

Yes

5552005457

9780553906271

996 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirments

Download reader

Microsoft

Yes

5552005449

9780553906271

1847 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirments

Download reader

Digital Editions

Yes

0553906275

9780553906271

2582 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirments

Download reader

Hands of My Father

A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love
Chapter One

The Sound of Silence My first language was sign.

I was born shortly after midnight, July 1, 1933, my parents’ first child. Thus I had one tiny reluctant foot in the first half of that historically fateful year, and the other firmly planted in the second half. In a way my birth date, squarely astride the calendar year, was a metaphor for my subsequent life, one foot always being dragged back to the deaf world, the silent world of my father and of my mother, from whose womb I had just emerged, and the other trying to stride forward into the greater world of the hearing, to escape into the world destined to be my own.

Many years later I realized what a great expression of optimism it was for my father and mother, two deaf people, to de ... read full excerpt from: Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love ebook

Top eBooks in "Personal Memoirs"

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India a

by Gilbert, Elizabeth

This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the ...more

$12.99

Some Girls: My Life in a Harem

by Lauren, Jillian

A jaw-dropping story of how a girl from the suburbs ends up in a prince's hare, and emerges from the secret Xanadu both richer and wiser At eighteen, Jillian Lauren was an ...more

$9.99

Dawn's Awakening

by Leigh, Lora

Review: Ms. Leigh continues to overwhelm me with her superior writing prowess. Her ability to build an entirely new world for her characters to function in is ...more

$6.99

The Last Living Slut

by Shirazi, Roxana

Every night Roxana prays for her wild heart...and never wins. Born in Iran, with full-blood Persian playing host to my salacious flesh, I was sent to England at the ...more

$12.99

Confessions of a Video Vixen

by Steffans, Karrine

Review: This book was raw, entertaining and real! I never thought the life of video vixen could be so glam and yet so lonely. A must read for women out there who have ...more

$10.99

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

by Obama, Barack

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black ...more

$9.59

Other Biography eBooks Categories

Biography General & Other (2181)

Personal Memoirs (1657)

Women (389)

Literary (187)

Medical (104)

Political (163)

Travelers (21)

Entertainers (255)

Military (188)

Religious (167)