In a way my birth date, squarely astride the calendar year, was a metaphor for my subsequent life, one foot always being dragged back to the deaf world, the silent world of my father and of my mother, from whose womb I had just emerged, and the other trying to stride forward into the greater world of the hearing, to escape into the world destined to be my own. Thus I had one tiny reluctant foot in the first half of that historically fateful year, and the other firmly planted in the second half. I was born shortly after midnight, July 1, 1933, my parents’ first child. The Sound of Silence My first language was sign. HANDS OF MY FATHER is a timeless story that is both unique and universal.

While his father, in turn, signed to him his own translations of the newspaper headlines trumpeting every battle on the European and Pacific fronts, so that he watched the progress of the war through the medium of his father's hands.Įloquent, touching and often funny as well, Uhlberg's 'memories have been beatifully served.in this heartfelt book' (Booklist). Listening to the radio he had to sign for his father every blow in what was called the 'fight of the century,' the boxing match between America's Brown Bomber Joe Louis and Hitler's Master Race champion Max Schmeling.

Because of his role-straddling situation, he was a pint-sized witness to many of the key moments of his historic era. His first language was American Sign Language (ALS), but his second language was spoken English, and no sooner did he learn it than he was called upon to act as his father's designated ears and mouth in the stores and streets beyond their silent apartment. Called 'a well-crafted, heartwarming tale of family love and understanding' by Publisher Weekly, HANDS OF MY FATHER is published by Bantam Books.īorn in Brooklyn at the absolute bottom of the Great Depression, Uhlberg was the son of two people who shared a boundless optimism about the future. As he performed the delicate balancing act of mediating between his father and the hearing world, he was required to reverse the roles of parent and child translating adult words and concepts to his father at one moment, while at the next reverting to just what he was: his father's little boy. Capturing the emotional complexities of being a child in a position few us can imagine, it tells how from a very young age Uhlberg had to take on responsibilities that were far beyond his years. Myron Uhlberg's 'moving memoir' (Booklist), HANDS OF MY FATHER: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love, is a unique and beautifully told coming-of-age story.

Hands of my father myron uhlberg