Film Critic Henry Sheehan

DATE March 2, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Professor Lennard Davis discusses his experiences of being
a hearing child of deaf parents in his book "My Sense of Silence"
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev, in for Terry Gross.

My guest, Lennard Davis, grew up in two worlds. One was the world of a kid
from a working-class immigrant family in the South Bronx in the '50s. The
other was the world of his parents, who are both deaf. In his memoir, "My
Sense of Silence," David describes what it was like to live between sound and
silence. He writes eloquently of sign language, which he considers his native
tongue. He says it's like speech set to dance, which can be crisp and clear
or lilting and poetic. And Davis evokes the not-quite-silent atmosphere of
his family household: the sound of his mother and father's distinctive
voices; the furious slapping of hands as his parents had a fight in sign
language in the next room. But his parents' deafness also cast a darker
shadow across Davis' childhood. He writes that when he lay in bed at night,
he didn't experience what many children feel, that sense of security and
comfort, because his parents could never hear his cries.

Lennard Davis is the head of the English Department and a professor of
disability and human development at the University of Illinois-Chicago. When
I spoke with Davis last spring, I asked him to read this passage from his
book, "My Sense of Silence."

Professor LENNARD DAVIS (University of Illinois-Chicago): `A child of the
deaf may become hypervigilant. This is a word I heard used on the radio to
describe soldiers returning home from war. They lie in their beds at night,
hypervigilant. They wait for the bomb to drop, the shell to explode, the
friend to drag his limbless torso into the trench. That was my experience of
childhood. I listened for the burglars that my parents could not hear, for
the robbers, the monsters, the flash fire, the crackling sounds of a ceiling
collapsing. I was the guard, and it was all war.'

`Last night, I lay in bed listening to the mice running through a farmhouse
where I'm vacationing. The lights were off, my wife was asleep. I lay in
rigid awareness. When I hear sounds in the night, I still panic. My heart
pounds. I never wake my wife. And I never woke my parents. I lie now as
then, in silent terror.'

BOGAEV: Lennard Davis, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Prof. DAVIS: Well, thank you.

BOGAEV: And thank you for reading.

You know, as a first-time parent, I think my most terrifying thought was that
I would sleep so soundly at night, I wouldn't be able to hear my baby cry. Do
you have those memories, from your earliest childhood, of your parents not
being able to hear you cry?

Prof. DAVIS: I don't have specific memories, but I have kind of what
Priscorals calls a `memoir involuntaire,' that is, like, I have bodily
memories. I mean, I have, even to this day, a fear of being cold at night. I
take extreme precautions so that I won't be cold at night. I mean, I have,
you know, endless number of blankets that I keep around the bottom so I can
pull up to cover me. And I have this, sort of, dread of death and separation
even now when I turn the light out to go to bed.

So I do have some memories, and I actually begin the memoir with a kind of
memory of lying--because I was in the same bedroom as my parents, you know,
inches away from them without being able to, in some sense, communicate with
them as soon as the lights went out. The memoir begins with kind of a scene
of my parents making love, and I'm crying in bed. And I'm separate from them
and yet together in a strange sort of way.

BOGAEV: When you got a little older, though, did you work out methods for
them to hear you--for them to know that you were in distress, like banging on
the floor or something that would make a vibration that they could feel?

Prof. DAVIS: When I was in bed--I actually had my brother at that point. We
were--later on, we were sleeping in the same bedroom together, and he was 10
years older. But he was a pretty good teen-ager, so he could sleep through
almost anything. Once I became ambulatory, I could just over to them.

But I'll tell you one thing that's funny. Once when I was sick--I think I had
the measles or something, and I was in bed for a really long time--I devised
this kind of Rube Goldberg thing, that I could call my mother in the kitchen,
which was--it was a one-bedroom apartment, and I was at least two rooms away
from her; the bedroom, then a living room and then a kitchen. And I set up a
series of strings that I kind of roped through the doorways and doorknobs, and
so on. That way I could pull the string and it would turn a light switch on
in the liv--in the kitchen. So...

BOGAEV: Did that work?

Prof. DAVIS: Not very well, but it was better than nothing. I think that
was, sort of, the summary: `Better than nothing.'

BOGAEV: Do you remember realizing when you were young that you could hear and
your parents couldn't?

Prof. DAVIS: I don't have a specific memory of it because I--growing up in a
deaf family, deafness is not unusual as it would be in almost any family with,
you know, a disability or even any quirks in the family. So I wasn't really
aware of it until I began to see other people's reactions to my parents. I
think that was my sense of the beginning of a sense of difference. For
example, when I would ride on the subway with my parents and they would talk
to each other in sign language, everyone on the subway would stare at them.
And at a very early age--maybe three or four--I developed this sort of
obsessive system of staring down each person on the subway, working my way
from one part of the car to the other until they would stop looking. And then
I was just begin at the top of the car again, and start staring at them. So
that kind of thing. Or my friend's older brother said my father talked like
an Indian. And I tried to attack him, but it was useless because he was about
five times as big as me.

BOGAEV: Now you translated your parents' sign language. Were they eloquent
talkers in sign?

Prof. DAVIS: In sign--well, I interpreted, yes. And they were--sure, they
were. They spoke sign language the way that any normal person, any hearing
person, would speak English. I mean--in fact, they were eloquent in a way
that I didn't even realize because later, after my father died, I found
letters that they wrote, and they were really beautifully written. And my
father actually was--he was a correspondent for a national deaf newspaper. He
was a pretty good writer in English. And in sign, they were--you know, they
could say great things.

BOGAEV: But did they have their own style?

Prof. DAVIS: Well...

BOGAEV: I mean, everyone has a different style of speech, and some of us are
better talkers than others.

Prof. DAVIS: Sure. My mother was probably more direct as a signer. My
father probably was more elaborate. Also, they were both British. And so
they came to America, and their signing was sort of a combination of British
sign language and American Sign Language. So even now for me when I speak
sign language, I'm always sort of saying the wrong thing because I have their,
sort of, kind of amalgam language. When I speak...

BOGAEV: You mean calling the bathroom the `loo,' or something to the
equivalent?

Prof. DAVIS: Yeah, exactly. That would be the equivalent. Yeah, that's
right.

BOGAEV: You write that because your parents were deaf, there was a giant
dictionary of sounds for which you had no names.

Prof. DAVIS: Mm-hmm.

BOGAEV: What kind of sounds did you have no names for?

Prof. DAVIS: Well, the one I write about particularly was--well, something
very simple, actually, which I don't think I mentioned in the book is pigeons
cooing. I had no idea what that was for years. I couldn't figure that out.
You'd walk by a building, and there was this weird sound that came out of the
building, sort of off the roof level. I had absolutely no idea what it was.
It took me at least four or five years to figure that one out.

And when I would go to sleep at night, there were these cats in the alleyway
because I slept over the alleyway where the garbage was kept. And there'd be
constant cat fights, and I didn't know what those were, particularly the sound
of kind of a caterwauling yowl, which I thought was an old lady who lived
around the corner and, you know, to me, was kind of like a witchlike lady.
And I would, you know, listen to that, and then I'd look at her the next day
and think, `Were you outside my window yelling that way?' Things like that
were confusing.

Also, another extremely confusing thing was the Mr. Softee truck, which has a
kind of little musical chime. I don't know if--you'd have to grow up in New
York, but there this kind of little musical chime. And they started Mr.
Softee when I had the measles, and I was in bed for two weeks. And so all of
a sudden, I began hearing a music box just out the window at various hours,
and I had no idea what is was. And I thought this was kind of supernatural or
something. And I couldn't have...

BOGAEV: You must have thought you were mad.

Prof. DAVIS: Well, I thought that quite a few times.

BOGAEV: Did you talk to your parents in sign language?

Prof. DAVIS: My parents used what they called total communication. So they
both spoke and signed at the same time, and so did I. So kind of articulated
and signed at the same point.

My wife actually noticed something when she first met me and my father was
still alive. And when I used to speak with him, she said, `You know, you
speak in a British Liverpudlian accent when you speak to your father,' and I
sound like a deaf British person, which I don't think I sound like normally.

BOGAEV: So that's because your mother--she wasn't born deaf. She had spinal
meningitis, and she was the one with the Liverpool accent...

Prof. DAVIS: Right. Right.

BOGAEV: ...that she retained when she...

Prof. DAVIS: That's right.

BOGAEV: ...when she spoke after she lost her hearing.

Prof. DAVIS: Yes. She became deaf at seven. She had meningitis. And so
she was one of those things that linguists are always looking for. You know,
she was born in 1911. So the language of a kind of working-class,
Liverpudlian woman of that particular age is sort--it was sort of preserved in
her speech because it hadn't changed since she came to America.

BOGAEV: Now what kind of signer were you? Were you a good one?

Prof. DAVIS: Probably not. My parents--you know, this is common for
children of deaf adults. It's something that we talk about at the conferences
that we have. Some parents don't want their children to learn sign language
at all. They want them just to be part of the hearing world. Others let them
learn sign language quite adequately. My parents were sort of in between.
And so I learned sign language--my father certainly corrected me a lot, but
when I speak now--I can speak sign language, I can understand it, but I don't
think I'm anywhere near as fluent in it--or comfortable in it--as a lot of
other folks I know.

BOGAEV: And they didn't want--they were ambivalent about it because they
wanted you very much to be part of a hearing culture and not the deaf culture.

Prof. DAVIS: Yeah. Yeah, there are lots of deaf people who are very
much--and my parents were very much part of the New York deaf-Jewish
community. But my father had a little difference. He was a race walker. He
held the unofficial record for 25 miles, the American record. And he was a
member of the 92nd Street Y team, and was actually--there were banner
headlines in The New York Times from the 1930s of the races that he won. So
he kind of always fancied that he was more part of the hearing world than a
lot of deaf people would. And he had hearing friends. But--so there was a
way in which they really pushed me into the hearing world and said, `That's
your world. That's where you belong. You know, the deaf world is our world.
And you can be part of it, but you're really hearing.'

BOGAEV: I would think this being between two cultures, though, must be pretty
bewildering, especially since it's something so integral to yourself, your
language.

Prof. DAVIS: Yes, it is bewildering. And I think that there are lots of
people like myself who don't know whether they're deaf or hearing. And, in
fact, we tend to think of ourselves as bicultural. I think I've pretty much
adapted a persona, anyway, in the hearing world until about maybe 10 years
ago. And that's when I went to my first CODA conference--that's Children of
Deaf Adults--and began to realize, no, there's this whole other side of me
that I sort of suppressed in the effort to become a professor and in--you
know, somebody in the hearing world that uses English in a particular way.

And that's when I began to realize how much of myself was really deaf, and
what that means to me--that deaf people--there are certain ways that deaf
culture works. And one thing is that deaf people are very face-to-face, very
one-on-one with each other. When they talk, they look in each other's eyes.
They look at each other's faces. Hearing people tend to look away when they
talk. Deaf people touch a lot. They get intimate very quickly. This can be
misconstrued by people who don't understand this, and it certainly was the
case with me. People often thought I was--I don't know what--badly behaved or
too forward or too blunt. And I think I still get that to a certain degree.

BOGAEV: It sounds also as if, in an effort to communicate, they bring more of
their senses into the experience.

Prof. DAVIS: I don't know that that's the case. I mean, I think that's the
perception that hearing people have about deaf people because when you look at
deaf people, they seem so mobile and animated. But they're just doing with
their bodies what the hearing people do with their voices. In other words, I
can say `yes' 10 different ways. And if I'm going to use sign language, I
have to convey that `yes' in a different kind of way with my body, with my
face, with my gestures.

BOGAEV: When you sign, do you sign the way your parents did, make the same
gestures or those facial expressions or the sounds that your parents did?

Prof. DAVIS: Absolutely. And, in fact, even when I don't sign, one of the
things my wife--it took her awhile to figure this out and my daughter's always
pointing this out--is that when I'm angry or when I don't like the way
something tastes or what--or have--I get a very exaggerated look on my face of
disdain or anger, which I have to explain--it took me a long time to explain
to my wife, `I'm not really overreacting. That's simply the way I do it, and
you just have to know that that's the way a deaf person might show something
on their face.'

BOGAEV: Lennard Davis, from an interview recorded last year. His memoir is
"My Sense of Silence." We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: We're featuring an interview recorded last year with Lennard Davis.
His memoir of growing up a hearing child of deaf parents is "My Sense of
Silence."

Was your first word in sign language or a verbal?

Prof. DAVIS: My first word was in sign language, and it was the word for
`milk.' And my parents say that I had my little hands through the crib asking
for milk.

BOGAEV: What is that sign for milk?

Prof. DAVIS: It's this.

BOGAEV: Can you describe it?

Prof. DAVIS: Yeah. Yeah. Radio's not very good for the deaf.

BOGAEV: No.

Prof. DAVIS: Actually, the way I do it is wrong. I mean, it's the sign
language of my family. It's as if you were milking a cow, two hands going up
and down, squeezing a little bit. But I think the actual method in America is
one hand just kind of squeezing it together and unsqueezing.

BOGAEV: Do you think, then, of signing as your native language? I mean, are
there things that you can only say with your hands?

Prof. DAVIS: Well, let me put it this way. I'm a very verbal person, and I
live in language. I write. And words are very important to me. I'm an
English professor. I teach how to interpret texts. So I'm very--that's a
world I'm really comfortable in. But sign language is a whole other world,
and there are ways it intersects and there are ways it doesn't.

But when I sign--if I sign the word for `milk,' I feel more milky, you know.
If I say the words for `love,' which is your hands crossed against your chest,
and you kind of push it and give yourself a hug--it feels more like love than
just the word `love.' So there's a kind of intensity, and there's a kind of
childhood connectedness to these sort of primal words in sign language. And I
often speak to myself in sign language; a lot of times when I'm driving, which
is pretty dangerous. But I do a lot of driving, and I'll start--or I'll
translate what I hear on the radio, you know, "All Things Considered" or music
into sign language.

BOGAEV: You write about the normal voices of the deaf--these are your
words--`how they're soothing like whale sounds; cooing and arcing under the
surface of the deep, too low for birds.' I thought that that was a really
beautiful description. What were your parents' voice like? Like that?

Prof. DAVIS: Well, you know, there is a kind of `deaf' sound. My mother had
this Liverpudlian accent, and she'd say things like `cookie' (pronounced
koo-key) and `punch' (pronounced poonch) and `lunch' (pronounced loonch)--she
sounds like The Beatles--but with a slightly distorted sound. And the way I
would kind of describe it is, like, if you leave your hand in water for too
long and then the flesh begins to slowly change. And I think if you know a
language and then you become deaf, things start to change a little bit. But
she had a kind of high-pitched, kind of silvery sound to her voice, and I
always found it very irresistible. She'd call me from the apartment building,
and it was like this lasso, silver lasso, thrown out to me playing stick ball
or something, and I would just immediately come. Of course, I couldn't not
come because I couldn't call and say no.

But my father was much more gruff. He had a deep voice. He was gruff. He
was kind of more of a gruff person. And he had a kind of scary voice to some
people, and very scary to us when he was angry. But it was that sort of low,
grumbling voice that would be difficult for a lot of hearing people to
understand.

BOGAEV: Now your parents went to a social club for the deaf, and often took
you and your brother with them. What did it sound like there?

Prof. DAVIS: Oh, it was wonderful. Lots of sounds. There'd be kind of--you
know, you could hear people--there are all kinds of grunts and groans, and
you'd hear people's false teeth chattering. There was just about as many
different sounds as a human being can make without--and then sometimes, it'd
be very quiet and you'd just see a million people sitting standing around
speaking in sign language, and not much sound. We loved it. And we used to
run around, and we used to yell out loud and nobody could hear us. It was
great.

BOGAEV: I would imagine, though, growing up, you know, in the '50s, it wasn't
a great time for understanding or acknowledgement, even, of disabilities. Did
you think of sign language, I guess, as a poor substitute for spoken English?
I mean, did it cause you to adopt, perhaps, some of the discriminatory or
prejudicial ideas people had about your parents that they had: they were less
intelligent; that they were, you know, quote, unquote, "deaf and dumb"?

Prof. DAVIS: Well, you know, there's been a lot of work on sign language in
the last 10, 15 years to show that it's a complete language, as complete and
capacious and commodious as any language around. But yeah, in the 1950s,
there was not a lot of understanding. There was no Marlee Matlin. There was
no National Theater of the Deaf. There were not TTYs. There was no
captioning. I mean, being deaf was just kind of crummy from the point of view
of accessibility and resources. And my parents were poor, and so they never
went to Gallaudet, which was a college at the time, and their education
stopped at sixth grade. So--and most deaf people, I think, did consider their
language not really as good as English.

But then, of course--you know, if you look at this history of English, you
find out that in the 17th century, people didn't consider English as good as
Latin. So that was sort of at that stage. And I thought of it was gestural.
I think I kind of thought of it as a substitute, a pidgin, of not really a
language. And that's why I was so interested in this other really burnished
language that was--that there was poetry and theater and drama. And I didn't
understand as I do now, that there's wonderful theater and great poetry in
sign language. And I think that's been the wonderful, remarkable discoveries
of the last 10 or 15 years.

BOGAEV: You mentioned people staring at you on the subway. Kids can be
really cruel. Did kids, your peers, give you a hard time about your parents?

Prof. DAVIS: You know, except for the kid who said my father talked like a
Native American, not really. I mean, I grew up in a pretty working-class
neighborhood. Everybody knew my parents. I mean, they--you know, it wasn't
like--they didn't treat my parents particularly different. In fact, you know,
it was the kind of neighborhood you kind of ignored the parents and you just
kind of went with the kids. And I actually spent a lot of time teaching all
my friends how to do finger spelling. So that sort of made me feel kind of
special.

Aside from when, like, my mother would come to school, there wasn't really a
lot of interaction. My parents pretty much stayed to themselves and let me
have a lot of freedom, which was good and bad.

BOGAEV: Lennard Davis' memoir is "My Sense of Silence." We spoke last year.

We'll continue our conversation in the second half of the show. I'm Barbara
Bogaev, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: Coming up, a deaf father's obsession with television. We continue
our conversation with Lennard Davis about his memoir "My Sense of Silence."
Also, David Bianculli reviews the season opener of "The Sopranos," and Henry
Sheehan reviews "The Mexican."

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev.

Let's continue our interview with Lennard Davis recorded last spring. He's
the author of a memoir, "My Sense of Silence," about growing up the son of
deaf parents in the South Bronx in the '50s. His parents were working-class
Jews who emigrated from England.

How did your father, your mother support the family?

Mr. DAVIS: My father was a sewing machine operator in the Garment District
and my mother was an alteration hand. She used--when I was a kid, she took
in--people came to our house and she fixed their clothing. She altered them.
She made clothing. And my father was a seasonal worker, so he was--he wasn't
working for about half the year and most of the time he was home sort of
grumpy and, you know, reading the Daily News and criticizing everybody and
falling asleep on the couch. And my mother was--it was kind of odd for me
because there was a steady stream of women who would come into our living room
and take their clothes off and then, you know, my mother would sort of tend to
their--get on her knees and sort of fix their clothing. I found this kind of
interesting, actually.

BOGAEV: I bet. Was tailoring a common occupation for deaf people? I can't
imagine there were all that many occupations open to them.

Mr. DAVIS: Yes. Tailoring was one. Physically, the sewing machine
operators were good because they weren't disturbed by the noise. The classic
deaf occupation was Linotyper because you could work for the newspapers and
you could have this deafening noise and it wouldn't bother you and, you know,
your reading skills and so on were not involved with your deafness. But my
father always wanted to get into, like, Linotype or the plumbers union or
something, but he ended up always being this, you know, sewing machine
operator and it was kind of--he was sort of proud about his work, but I
think, on some level, he would have liked to have done better.

BOGAEV: You write in your memoir that television was just this towering
presence in your house. That your father was extremely controlling about the
use of and the treatment of and the handling of the television. What were
some of his rules about that?

Mr. DAVIS: Oh, the TV--we--the deal in my house--it was sort of a Hobson's
choice that was given to my brother and my father--my parents said, `Do you
want a brother or do you want a TV set?' This was in 1949. My brother, to his
credit, said he wanted a brother, but, you know, as soon as I showed up, it
was--I turned out to be rather boring in the beginning so he wanted a TV set.
So they got one in 1950 and this was this wonderful Emerson console, you know;
this kind of mahogany monolith. And it stood in my living room. And my
father was--he instantly became a devotee and it was like a--this thing was
like his god and he--of course, he loved watching baseball, which he could do
without hearing.

And the TV set was--he was so terrified. It was, also, breaking all the time,
so we had all these rules, like, you know, you're never allowed to touch the
little box in the front of it that had the horizontal and vertical controls.
And you have to--every time you turned the channel, you had to take your hand
off so that the TV would have a chance to rest. I mean, these were kind of
invented things, but to placate the god of the television. But he was very
insistent about it. And, also, if you turned the TV set off, you had to wait
10 minutes before you turned it on again so that it wouldn't get upset. And,
of course, I ended up doing all the things I wasn't supposed to do and
breaking the TV set and constantly having to have it shipped off, so anytime
the TV set broke, it was my fault, by definition.

BOGAEV: Because you were the youngest.

Mr. DAVIS: I was the youngest and, therefore, the least likely to follow
orders.

BOGAEV: Lennard, when you edited these letters that was from a period of
courtship when your mother was still in England and your father was already
in America and they were separated for two years, how did you get access to
the letters?

Mr. DAVIS: Well, when my father died, I went to his apartment and I found
them and they were this neat, little package of letters and it was one of
these things that, you know, you see in the movies where somebody opens up
this little package and you read the first letter. And I got completely
sucked into it. They're in--absolutely in order. They're mostly my mother's
letters to him from the period of 1936 to '38 and I--it was fascinating. I,
literally, entered into this courtship that they were having with each other
when they were, you know, younger than I was when I read it at that point--or
at least my mother was. And it was a kind of pager turner, I mean. And
periodically, they would break up and they'd have fights and suddenly I would
begin to feel myself sort of disappearing, you know. It was sort of the
"Back to the Future" moment where my--and I began to get faint every time
that they would fight with each other.

But--and the last letter is my mother saying, you know, `I'm coming. I'm
getting on the boat. I'm coming over.' And that was the last letter.

BOGAEV: What did you learn from them, from the letters, about your parents
that you hadn't known or you couldn't have known, as a kid?

Mr. DAVIS: Well, the thing that I think was the most dramatic, for me, was
that my mother--when I was growing up, my mother was kind of this quiet, sort
of, you could say, depressed; you could say Zen kind of presence in the
house. I mean, she was sort of the submissive wife. Occasionally, she'd
fight with my father, but, you know, usually he would win. And it was--she
was kind of quiet. He was always supposed to be the great writer. You know,
he wrote--he had this column in the newspaper and he wrote plays and things.
And my mother was supposed to be sort of the less-educated one.

Well, you look at the letters. She writes these fabulous letters; very
strong, very powerful; a woman who really knows what she wants. I mean, my
father--they had only met each other three or four times and my father had to
leave England because his visa ran out and he--right at the third or fourth
time, he said he wanted her to come to America. He wanted to marry her. And
the letters are all about her saying, `Well, I don't know who you are and what
is this all about and I do love you, but this is a big jump and,' you know,
`how can you say such things?' And it was just this kind of well-written,
clear, direct writing. That was a big surprise for my about my mother. And
my father was this kind of, like, you know, on his knees kind of wooer, you
know; was totally crazy about her and begging her to do all these kind of
things that seemed pretty impulsive.

BOGAEV: So--and both those things seemed so out of character for them.

Mr. DAVIS: Well, my father always was in love with my mother, but just to
see him as this sort of, you know, love-struck guy. Yeah. That was kind of
interesting, too.

BOGAEV: You are involved with an organization called Children of Deaf Adults,
CODA, and at a meeting of CODA, you once hired actors to read from the letters
and you invited your brother to attend and to hear this. I can't imagine what
that must be like to hear--to have both of you hear your parents really given
voice. Did it ring true to you or was it jarring?

Mr. DAVIS: Oh, no. It was incredible. It was one of the most amazing
experiences. The two actors were, themselves, CODAs, and then we set it up
the way that love letter is plays, so they were sitting at a table. And
behind them were two people that would be signing what they were actually
voicing, so you had both signing and voicing. And, you know, we made the
letters have a kind of structure to them and it was incredible. The audience
reacted.

There were about 300 or 400 people in the audience and they just reacted so
positively and they were so interested in it that it was an amazing
vindication for me because my parents were--I mean, they were working-class,
deaf people. I mean, what--who could be lower on the totem pole? And here
was this occasion where their letters were being performed and people were
really thinking of them as kind of a, you know, interesting story, well
written. And even the fact that the letters were published by Gallaudet
University Press--their letters are now going to be in the archives of that
library--would have been such an honor for them. Plus, they also would have
been completely mystified. I mean, I'm sure if they were alive they wouldn't
have wanted the letters to be published.

BOGAEV: Lennard Davis' memoir is "My Sense of Silence."

More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: If you're just joining us, we're featuring an interview recorded last
spring with Lennard Davis, author of a memoir of growing up the son of deaf
parents called "My Sense of Silence."

When you do think of your parents, do you hear them talking to you or do you
see them signing to you?

Mr. DAVIS: Both.

BOGAEV: Mm-hmm. And talking in their original voices or in voices of more
fluency that you've internalized and...

Mr. DAVIS: No, no. I kind of feel them in original voice. I wish I had
recordings of them. I mean, you wouldn't necessarily think you'd want to
record a deaf person, but I'd love to hear their voices now. I do miss them.
They're both dead.

BOGAEV: I thought it was interesting that in translating their signing or
their speech and your signing in this book, "My Sense of Silence," that you
didn't turn the language into English, that you left out connecting words like
articles. In deaf culture, is there an accepted etiquette to how you're
supposed to translate signing, not to English, by it--I don't know--make it
more verbal?

Mr. DAVIS: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a good point, good question. And when
I first started writing about it, I was talking to somebody who was an
interpreter and they said, `Please, don't do this thing where you make them
come across as sounding illiterate,' because, you know, if they were speaking
in sign language, they wouldn't be illiterate. It would be flowing. But I
felt that to really capture them, since they also did speak, I had to give the
sort of way that they spoke. I had to try to characterize the way that they
spoke.

And, I mean, there's a book that somebody recently wrote called "Train Go
Sorry," which is a literal translation of an expression in sign language. It
means like you missed the boat. But to say `you missed the boat' would miss
the nice way that that is formed. `Train go sorry.' You know? And there's
also something called CODA talk, which developed spontaneously in the CODA
conferences, and a lot of people talk that way to each other in the
conference. Because sign language belongs to the deaf and English belongs to
the hearing, let's say, spoken English, so we CODAs don't have a language.
And so CODA talk came out about as a kind of language that we could express
ourselves in. And people actually write poems in it.

BOGAEV: Now you became an academic. You're also a writer of cultural
criticism. You teach English. And all of these jobs are a form of
translation of some way, of interpreting culture, interpreting books,
interpreting books for your students, helping them. Do you see a continuity
between the role you played for your parents and your chosen profession?

Mr. DAVIS: Oh, absolutely. Although, I didn't see it right away. In fact,
the funny thing was that for me--I mean, I was a poor kid from the Bronx. I
got a scholarship from my parents' union and also from Columbia. And I went
to Columbia College and I went to Columbia University and I studied with all
these sort of famous people. And I thought, `Ah, I'm going to move into this
world of refined language and, you know, I'm going to be doing something about
as different as I possibly could from growing up in a deaf family in the
Bronx.' And then it hit me at some point that actually what I'm doing is I'm
an interpreter of text and I'm interpreting from--and even as a writer, you
know, you're interpreting your ideas. You're putting them in the best
possible language. You're thinking about how to say this in the right way.
So in some sense, it's what I've always been doing, and I'm pretty comfortable
doing it.

BOGAEV: Your father is dead. Both your parents are dead. But your father
did live long enough to see you established in your career, right?

Mr. DAVIS: Mm-hmm.

BOGAEV: Your mother died, though, I think when you were in college...

Mr. DAVIS: Yes.

BOGAEV: ...in a car accident.

Mr. DAVIS: Well, she died what I consider the death of a deaf person. I
mean, she was coming from the deaf club on 14th Street and she, you know, was
going to get a sandwich. It was about 6:00 at night. And she crossed the
street and the light changed and some car came barreling along and honked,
assuming that she would hear, but she didn't and she was killed. I was 22.
It was pretty traumatic.

BOGAEV: And that's common, I guess.

Mr. DAVIS: Well, you know, deafness is an invisible disability. You wouldn't
assume that people walking along the street are deaf if you were driving your
car and you honked...

BOGAEV: Mm-hmm.

Mr. DAVIS: ...but maybe you should.

BOGAEV: I'm curious if silence is important for you in your life, that you
somehow absorbed some of your parents silence. Although, it doesn't sound
like they were very silent. But I imagine there were hours and there were
days when there was much more silence in your house than in others.

Mr. DAVIS: Mm-hmm. Well, you know, one thing to just clear up is that a lot
of people think that to be deaf is to be silent. But deaf people are
pretty--they fill up the space not only with sign language, but also with even
noises. And there are deaf noises that are sort of communicative in a way,
and slapping hands and, you know, other kinds of sound.

But, yes, I spent a lot of time with complete silence. My father used to
watch the TV with the sound off. And that sound--I don't know if you're aware
of what a TV sounds like with the sound off, but there's this kind of
high-pitched hum, which I really got to like as a kid. But that's sort of
almost kind of the sound of silence.

And I spend a lot of time thinking about silence even now and kind of myself
wanting to be in a completely quiet environment and then also sort of hating
it. You know, so I'm ambivalent I guess. But I haven't figured out silence
yet. I'm still working on it.

BOGAEV: Lennard Davis, I want to thank you very much for talking with us
today.

Mr. DAVIS: Well, I'm delighted to talk to you.

BOGAEV: Lennard Davis' memoir is "My Sense of Silence." We spoke last
spring. He has a new novel, "The Sonnets," due out in April.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: New comedy "The Mexican"
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

Hollywood superstars Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt star in the new comedy "The
Mexican." James Gandolfini, the mob boss from the TV show "The Sopranos,"
plays a lovable hit man. Film critic Henry Sheehan says Gandolfini's
character steals the movie.

HENRY SHEEHAN reporting:

Let's face it. The days when high-wattage stars like Marlene Dietrich and
Gary Cooper teamed up for romantic romps are long gone. In the 21st century,
you get Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, or at least "The Mexican's" advertising
makes you think you do. Actually, this comedy-criminal escapade puts the two
leads together for a few minutes at the movie's beginning and a few more at
the end. And that's just misstep number one. "The Mexican" turns out to be
one of those movies that leaves you frustrated over Hollywood's inability to
put together a simple piece of entertaining fluff.

Pitt plays a laid back Angeleno named Jerry, who is coming to the end of an
enforced five year tenure as a mob errand boy. Roberts, as Jerry's girlfriend
Samantha, has been putting up with Jerry's job under adamant protest. When
she discovers that Jerry has been pressed into one more job, she hits the roof
and the road. While Jerry heads south for Mexico, Samantha cuts their ties
and leaves for Vegas.

Jerry is going to Mexico because his mob boss wants him to pick up a
priceless, golden-crusted, antique pistol called The Mexican. Typically,
Jerry bungles the pickup and has to retrieve the pistol from some thieves.
Here, Jerry tries to deal with the chief thief in what he thinks is an
appropriate tough-guy manner.

(Soundbite of "The Mexican")

Mr. BRAD PITT (Jerry): I'm not going to kill you, but I'm going to have to
shoot you.

Unidentified Man: But why, sir? Why?

Mr. PITT: Why? Why? Because you stole from me and you know about the
pistol and you're just going to steal again. And I can't have you coming back
in the situation like a fly in the ointment.

Unidentified Man: No. I won't be a fly. You'll never see me again.

Mr. PITT: Look, you're getting shot and that's it. You'll take your time to
get to the next town, especially if you're limping.

Unidentified Man: Wait, wait, wait. Limping? Can't you just tie me up some
more? I mean, you shoot me? Tie me!

Mr. PITT: Yeah. I don't have a rope.

Unidentified Man: So you shoot me?

Mr. PITT: It's the American way. Where do you want it? OK.

Unidentified Man: No, not the leg. There's arteries. I could bleed to death
in mere seconds.

Mr. PITT: The foot then.

SHEEHAN: Jerry is taking so long performing a single task that his bosses
think he might have stolen the pistol for himself. As insurance against that
possibility, they have Samantha taken hostage by a professional hit man who is
named Leroy and played by James Gandolfini.

Leroy is the most intriguing character in the movie, but also the most
symptomatic of the movie's failings. Underneath the killer's cold
professionalism, Leroy turns out to be a sensitive guy who ends up having
long, heart-felt conversations with Samantha about the vicissitudes of love.
Gandolfini could probably play this type in his sleep, but to his credit, he
doesn't. On the contrary, he gives the most emotionally affecting performance
in the movie.

Yet Leroy turns out to be an utterly inconsistent figure--cold-blooded and
ruthless one minute, puppy dog cuddly the next. That could be a sign of
psychosis, and the movie suggests he's an outright nut at one point, but it's
also typical of the movie's inability to maintain a single mood or
characterization. Leroy becomes the center of increasingly violent and
graphic crimes culminating in a shocking murder. But moments after the
murder, everyone involved shrugs it off and proceeds as if it had never
happened.

There are other outbreaks of collective amnesia. During Pitt's Mexican foray,
three whole characters and a good-sized subplot simply vanish without
explanation and without anyone else seeming to notice. That's what happens
when you apply a TV commercial mentality to movie making. Director Gore
Verbinski's only previous feature was "The Great Mouse Hunt,"(ph) but his
resume is filled with successful commercial productions. Verbinski's
attention span isn't quite limited to 30 seconds, but it doesn't seem to
extend much longer than that either.

Roberts has long ceased being the pink-sweatered mannequin she used to be.
Here, she can be wonderful, especially when she's with Gandolfini. The
closest the film ever comes to real drama is in the scenes they have together.
Pitt is a far less accomplished actor, but he's a better performer then he was
even a couple of years ago. He hasn't overcome his centerfold style
narcissism, but at least he's been able to integrate it into his character.

If you're into star gazing, even with intermittent clouds, you could do worse
then check out "The Mexican." Just don't expect a whole constellation.

BOGAEV: Henry Sheehan is film critic for the Orange County Registar.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: Coming up, a review of the season opener of "The Sopranos." This is
FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: HBO series "The Sopranos"
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

This Sunday after a very long wait, fans of the HBO series "The Sopranos"
finally got to watch some new episodes. TV critic David Bianculli has this
review.

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Man #1: Woke up this morning, got yourself a gun. Your mama
always said you'd be the chosen one. She said, `One in a million and you got
the gun shine.' You were born under a bad sign with a demon in your eye.

DAVID BIANCULLI reporting:

The second season of "The Sopranos" ended with New Jersey mob boss Tony
Soprano, played by James Gandolfini, feverish from food poisoning. He dreamed
about a talking fish, a fish that spoke with the voice of his close buddy Big
Pussy, who admitted of being a turncoat for the feds. When Tony woke up, he
found out the dream was correct. Before the episode was over, Big Pussy
wasn't talking with the fishes. He was sleeping with them.

Also, Tony was arrested for passing on stolen airline tickets to his own
mother, played by Nancy Marchand. The show ended with a scene at his
daughter's graduation party. Tony was led away in handcuffs, promising he'd
be back in a couple of hours. That was 11 months ago.

There hasn't been an original first-run episode of "The Sopranos" since April
of last year. And during the hiatus, Marchand, whose evil matriarch Livia
Soprano was a key part of the show, died. Clearly, series creator David Chase
had some work to do. He's done it brilliantly.

Sunday night HBO presents the first two episodes of the show's third season.
Tony is out of jail and back in charge. Livia is still alive, but not for
very long. Tony's wife Carmela, played by Edie Falco, is trying to keep the
family unit intact even though their daughter, Meadow, played by Jamie Lynn
Sigler, has left for college at Columbia.

And while life as a mob boss is tricky enough, most of Tony's energies in
these early episodes are directed to dealing with personal issues. There's
his relationship with his mother, his increasingly distant relationships with
his teen-age kids, and in one intense confrontation that brings to the surface
the more reprehensible side of Tony's personality, his private conversation
with his daughter's new boyfriend from college whom he's meeting for the first
time.

(Soundbite of "The Sopranos")

Mr. JAMES GANDOLFINI (Tony Soprano): So you guys, you know, you and Meadow,
are you...

Unidentified Man #2: A little early to say.

Mr. GANDOLFINI: What's your background, Nol?

Unidentified Man #2: Noah. I'm from Los Angeles, west LA.

Mr. GANDOLFINI: Oh, no. What I mean is...

Unidentified Man #2: My family's in the business. I mean, show business. I
don't know why they call it `the business.'

Mr. GANDOLFINI: Those old Tarzan movies?

Unidentified Man #2: My dad's an entertainment lawyer.

Mr. GANDOLFINI: What I mean is like we're Italian.

Unidentified Man #2: Oh, my dad is Jewish and my mother's family is
African-American.

Mr. GANDOLFINI: Tanimbar, right. But on your application to Columbia, you
didn't check Jewish did you?

Unidentified Man #2: No. They can't ask about religious affiliation.

Mr. GANDOLFINI: All right. Right. Of course. What did you check?

Unidentified Man #2: African-American.

Mr. GANDOLFINI: So we do understand each other here. You're de tu.

Unidentified Man #2: Excuse me?

Mr. GANDOLFINI: A charcoal briquette, a molinyon.

Unidentified Man #2: What's your problem?

Mr. GANDOLFINI: I think you know what my problem is. You see your little
friend up there, she didn't do you any favors bringing you into this house.
Now I don't know what the (censored) she was thinking. We'll get to that
later. You see I've got business associates who are black. And they don't
want my son with their daughters, and I don't want their sons with my mine.

Unidentified Man #2: (Censored) you.

Mr. GANDOLFINI: You see that's the kind of thing I'm hoping to avoid. So
when my little girl comes down the stairs, you're going to say how nice it was
to meet me. Then you're going to go drop her off at school and you're going
to say, `Goodbye.'

Ms. JAMIE LYNN SIGLER (Meadow Soprano): Come on if you want to see the
Garden State. We're going to drop by Hunter's. I want him to meet Noah, then
we'll be back to pick up my laundry. Later, Dad.

BIANCULLI: Based on four episodes provided for preview, this third season of
"The Sopranos" is as good as the first, which means it's about as good at TV
gets. The death of Livia turns out to provide the show with lots of terrific
sparks and plot twists. The post-funeral service is outrageously angry. Tony
gets more serious about therapy to deal with how good he feels about his
mother's death. And Janice, Tony's loose cannon sister, returns for the
funeral.

Also, new characters are introduced, the best of which is Joe Pantoliano from
"Easy Street" as a gangster with an attitude so bad he makes Tony look
civilized. The point of "The Sopranos," of course, is that these people
aren't civilized. We care about them as characters and even like them. Then,
when they turn around and do something horrific, the shock and revulsion are
that much more uncomfortable. These aren't people we love to hate. The more
we get to know them, these are people we hate to love.

On every level the show is a true treat. The entire cast is marvelous and
Chase does some stuff that's just flat out fun to watch. In one scene in
Sunday's third season opener, he stages a long sequence where federal agents
tail every member of the Soprano family, chasing them around streets and dorms
and strip clubs, in hopes of finding a time when the house is empty so they
can plant a bug. The scene already has energy to spare, but Chase ups the
ante by setting it to two brilliantly merged pieces of music. One is the
theme to "Peter Gunn," the other is "Every Breath You Take" by The Police.
It's the little touches like that, as much as the operatic characters and
plots, that make "The Sopranos" worth the wait even after 11 months.

BOGAEV: David Bianculli is TV critic for the New York Daily News. "The
Soprano" season opener airs Sunday night on HBO.

(Credits)

BOGAEV: For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.

(Soundbite of "The Sopranos;" music)

Unidentified Man #3: She's leaving the court.

(Soundbite of motor starting)

Unidentified Man #4: ...(Unintelligible) leaving the Bing, too.

(Soundbite of motor starting; car pulling away; tires squealing)

Unidentified Man #5: This does not look good. This is Bing bearing north on
Grandview Avenue.

Unidentified Man #3: She's turn off to Blockerwood Road. She's heading
towards the factory.

Unidentified Man #6: Abort. Repeat, abort. SC-2 get the hell out of there
now.

Unidentified Man #7: Aborting. It's not go. Repeat, we are not a go.

(Soundbite of squealing tires and cars driving)

Unidentified Man #5: There's supposed to be a crisis with one of the
children.

Unidentified Man #8: Control, I place Baby Bing in the school building.

Unidentified Man #6: Unit 5, report.

Unidentified Woman: This is Bri Roger from this end, too. She went into her
room about two minutes ago. I heard her tell a friend she was going to get
some sleep.

Unidentified Man #9: You think somebody made us?

Unidentified Man #10: I don't know. But we're finished for today here,
ladies and gentlemen.

(Credits)

BOGAEV: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.