If a Tree Falls: A Family's Quest to Hear and Be Heard

by Jennifer Rosner

Overview

A revealing memoir of a family and a “wrenching journey into deafness from the standpoint of a mother, a wife, a daughter, a philosopher, and a Jew” (Ilan Stavans, author of On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language).

When her daughters were born deaf, Jennifer Rosner was stunned. Then she discovered a hidden history of deafness in her family, going back generations to the Jewish enclaves of Eastern Europe. Traveling back in time in her mind, she imagined her silent relatives, who showed surprising creativity in dealing with a world that preferred to ignore them.

Here, in a “gentle meditation on sound and silence, love and family” Rosner shares her journey into the modern world of deafness, and the controversial decisions she and her husband made about hearing aids, cochlear implants and sign language (Publishers Weekly).

Punctuated by memories of being unheard, Rosner’s imaginative odyssey of dealing with her daughters’ deafness is at its heart a story of whether she—a mother with perfect hearing—can ever truly hear her children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558616622
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	05/01/2010
Series:	Jewish Women Writers Series
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	524,703
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Rosner is the author of the memoir If A Tree Falls: A Family's Quest to Hear and Be Heard and the novel The Yellow Bird Sings. Her children's book, The Mitten String, is a Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable. Jennifer's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Massachusetts Review, The Forward, Good Housekeeping, and elsewhere. She lives in western Massachusetts with her family.

Editorial Reviews

Rosner turns what could have been a depressing story into a gentle meditation on sound and silence, love and family. She writes with honesty and empathy about her daughter Sophia's diagnosis with deafness and the adjustments she and her husband had to make. She describes the birth of her second daughter, Juliet, a few years later (who received a similar diagnosis) and shares the programs and technology available to help the hearing impaired. "Bill and I were talkers. We were constantly debating, questioning, arguing, doubting, agreeing, wondering aloud. And we were hearers, in the hearing world. A soundless, wordless world was unimaginable to us." The author can't resist looking into the hows and whys of her situation and examines her family tree only to find relatives generations ago who had been deaf. She also works to reconcile her difficult relationship with her mother and asks frequent theoretical questions: "What are the elements essential for identity, for personhood, for perception and existence?" She fills the discussion with philosophy and grace.
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Publishers Weekly

"Rosner turns what could have been a depressing story into a gentle meditation on sound and silence, love and family. She writes with honesty and empathy... She fills the discussion with philosophy and grace." —Publishers Weekly

“Deep and moving truths fall out of this enchanting memoir, as deafness becomes a means of exploring the grave obstacles we all face in knowing what it is like to be another." —Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction

"This beautiful book is about listening—really listening—to children, history, and one's own knowing heart. It's an exquisite memoir, crossed with poetry and the unmistakable shine of truth." —Catherine Newman, author of Waiting for Birdy

"With profound honesty and endearing humility, Rosner writes about the searing emotional challenges that parents can face, and about absorbing these lessons and moving into deeper wisdom. A beautiful, deeply felt exploration of love and hard choices." —Josh Swiller, author of The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa

“This wrenching journey into deafness from the standpoint of a mother, a wife, a daughter, a philosopher, and a Jew explores the meaning of sound in a soundless world. If a Tree Falls shows the extent to which what we hear comes not only from our contemporaries but from the people who came before us and those who will succeed us.” —Ilan Stavans, author of On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language

"Jennifer Rosner's If a Tree Falls is the kind of memoir that reminds the reader how we are all part of the same long line: complicated selves finding our way in a world that challenges us to discover our deeper resilience and untold strengths." —Vicki Forman, author of This Lovely Life: A Memoir of Premature Motherhood

From the Publisher