Week 14

I am a hearing student assigned the book Train Go Sorry in my Introduction to Humanities Class. Other readings assigned in this class include several essays from the book My California. In both books and film, we examined the cultures of California that form a microcosm of the U.S.; and the U.S. forms a microcosm of the world. In this essay, I will incorporate 4 required questions.

Train Go Sorry is written from the perspective of a hearing person named Leah Hager Cohen. Cohen grew up in an apartment where her parents worked in the Lexington School for the Deaf. Cohen’s paternal grandparents were deaf and her grandfather attended Lexington at its original location before the fire. Cohen had a sister and an adopted black brother, regularly associated with deaf people, and began learning sign language from an early age. Her experiences are unique and chronicled for a better understanding and appreciation of Deaf culture.

James Taylor is considered a success story to Cohen because he came from nothing and became something. James was raised in the projects with very little and it was difficult for him to even get to school. When James would come to school, he would be falling asleep and not performing well. At the start of a new school year, James missed two weeks straight which concerned school officials. A couple administrators went to James’s home and found him living in substandard conditions and offered him campus housing at Lexington. James gladly accepted and from there his attendance, grades, and performance were all improving.

James and his brother Joseph were always kind of getting into trouble in the neighborhood. Eventually Joseph got in some pretty bad trouble and was sent to prison. James tried to visit Joseph a few times with no success. One time he dealt with over three hours of traveling, being searched, and waiting to only find that Joseph was in court for the day and unable to be visited. James thought to himself “train go sorry” which meant “you missed the boat” in ASL. This was something deaf people said about missed opportunities in life. James could have gone the route that his brother did, but after a final attempt to visit his brother he decided that he did not want to go back and see him in prison. James needed to do something different in his life to overcome the magnetic pull that was trying to drag him into failure. At this point James focused more time and energy on school and eventually graduated from Lexington School, passed the RCT, and went to college.

To walk in someone’s shoes is to experience the world from their perspective. Leah Hager Cohen grew up surrounded by deaf family members, friends, and acquaintances. She began learning sign language from an early age and eventually worked as interpreter when she got older. Cohen found the Deaf culture to be both fascinating and intimate and she often wished she were deaf so that she could be completely apart of that world. Cohen even dated a deaf man as an adult and he helped her to learn more about the language and culture of the Deaf. Eventually Cohen realized that her attempts to be around deaf people and try to immerse herself into the Deaf culture still did not make her deaf. She came to terms with the fact that she was a hearing person, she was different, but she could still help to educate others and bring awareness to Deaf culture because of her experiences.

The image that stands out in my mind is in Chapter 13 when a Lexington school supervisor and a social worker go to James’s home. His apartment is on the fourteenth floor, the hallways are dimly lit, the apartment is barren… the conversation between the family and the officials determines that James has no money, shoes, or school supplies so it almost impossible for him to get to Lexington School. The chaotic sounds of the neighboring apartments, the bleakness of his home, and the pity of his situation painted a dark and damp portrait of his struggling life.

Some facts that I think everyone should know about Deaf culture:
1. Deaf people can use their voices and understand English speech.
2. Restricting the use of ASL was a disservice and injustice to deaf people educationally, psychologically, and culturally.
3. Deafness is a culture.
4. TTY is closed captioned and technology for deaf.
5. Many deaf individuals use slang in signing that only has meaning to their group.


Classmates:
1. Amanda: MSSD is a school for the deaf, where students can go to learn just like everyone else
2. Diana: ASL is not the only kind of sign language, but it is the dominant type in the U.S., the english parts of Canada, and in some parts of Mexico.
3. Elizabeth: Deaf culture does not consider deafness a disability but rather a “human experience”.
4. Garin: Deaf culture does not like to be called "Hearing Impaired" because of the meaning of the word "impaired" we only like to be called deaf or hard of hearing.
5. Jeffery: Sign language is performed in many languages including English, Spanish, German, etc.
6. Justin: There are anywhere from 500,000 to 2 million people practicing the ASL in the US.
7. Karl: New signs in ASL are being added all the time in order to keep up with the new technology.
8. Maria: Within many Deaf communities, there is an opposition to the use of cochlear implants and hearing aids.
9. Nicholas: As you sign you should be looking at the other persons eyes and not at their hands, it is considered to be rude.
10. Wendy: Deaf culture is a term applied to the social movement that holds deafness to be a difference in human experience rather than a disability.