Most people either ignored the deaf or assumed that they were stupid. A young Myron learned early about the discrimination the hearing world had against the deaf. I found the memoir to be a compassionate and moving account of the author’s relationship with his father and the clash Uhlberg felt between an obligation to assist his parents and his desire to have a carefree childhood. As the hearing child of a deaf father, I was expected to perform the daily alchemy of transmuting the silent visual movements of my father’s hands into the sound of speech and meaning for the hearing, and then to perform the magic all over again for him, in reverse, transmuting invisible sound into visible sign. And with the acquisition of spoken language, a big part of my childhood ended before it began. I have no memory of learning this language, or at what age, but somehow I did. Uhlberg could hear and starting at a very early age that he had to act as a translator between his parents and the hearing world. But, this is not a typical coming of age memoir….both of Uhlberg’s parents were completely deaf. Myron Uhlberg’s memoir Hands of My Fathertells of his experiences growing up in Brooklyn, NY in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg
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