Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World

by Leah Hager Cohen

Paperback, 1995

Status

Available

Call number

305.908162

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Vintage (1995), Paperback, 320 pages

Description

"Train go sorry" is the American Sign Language expression for "missing the boat." Indeed, missed connections characterize many interactions between the deaf and hearing worlds, including the failure to recognize that deaf people are members of a unique culture. In this intimate chronicle of Lexington School for the Deaf, Leah Hager Cohen brings this extraordinary culture to life and captures a pivotal moment in deaf history. We witness the blossoming of Sofia, a young emigrant from Russia, who pursues her dream of preparing for her bat mitzvah, learning Hebrew in addition to English and ASL. Janie, a history teacher who participated in the Deaf President Now movement at Gallaudet University, leads a field trip to the campus; there we experience the intense pride of deaf people who have won the battle for self-determination and leadership. And we feel the pounding vibrations of a bass line as James, a student from the Bronx, loses himself in the pulse of rap music as he dreams of life beyond Lexington's safe borders. As a child, Leah Cohen put pebbles in her ears as pretend hearing aids. Herself hearing, she grew up at Lexington, where her father is currently superintendent, and where her grandfather was a student. Animating the debate over the controversial push toward mainstreaming and the use of cochlear implants, Cohen shows how these policies threaten the very place where deaf culture and students thrive: the school. With her enormous sensitivity, Leah Cohen offers a story of the human will and need to make connections.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member GoodGeniusLibrary

This book is an outstanding view into deaf culture: the issues involved in educating deaf children, the debate over whether or not being deaf is a disability or a cultural group, the ambivalence of a deaf person trying to live in two different cultures: deaf and hearing.

Leah Cohen grew up with an

inside view to the deaf world--she had deaf grandparents, her father taught and ran one of the largest deaf schools in the United States. She is brutally honest about showing both sides of many debates about deaf education, deaf culture, and the hearing world's response to both. She does not provide the answers to these debates but rather illustrates the issues by shadowing two students in their high school years both in the deaf school and at their hearing parents' homes. I was left wondering if deafness is a culture or a disability, but I was left with a greater understanding of the deaf and how they view themselves and how the rest of the world views the deaf. I now question the mainstreaming of deaf students in our public schools as Cohen clearly demonstrates how mainstreaming would not meet the social (cultural?) and educational needs of deaf children.

Train Go Sorry was written 15 years ago. I wonder what happened to James, the black inner-city kid. Did he rise above the poverty/gang/drug/crime culture to which his hearing brother succumbed? Where did he end up living and working? Did he get married? Have children? I have similar questions about Sofia. How has the internet and cell phones with text messaging, blogging, face-booking affect deaf people who generally are behind in writing and reading English? How has technology changed communication amongst the deaf and between the deaf and hearing worlds? I wish Cohen would write a follow-up to this book to answer these questions.

This book is a must read for anyone who knows a deaf person or who is a student of deaf studies.

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LibraryThing member karenmerguerian

A very compelling read. The author is both part of the Deaf world, having grown up among the Deaf community at the Lexington School in New York where her father was a teacher and administrator, and yet, as a hearing person, outside that world. Very sensitive in its treatment of ASL and oralism, and

of deaf culture and the hearing world's relationship to it. Cohen also paints nuanced portraits of deaf people she has known, resulting in sensitive treatment of the double discrimination that comes from being deaf and black, or an immigrant and deaf, or elderly and deaf. She addresses her own ambivalence about her role in the deaf community, about being an interpreter, about having a relationship with a deaf man. Beautifully written, too.

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