![]() These tensions within the deaf community shoot through Cohen's narrative, which unfolds via portraits of two Lexington students (a black American and a Russian immigrant) and memories of her grandfather, whose death was accelerated by a hospital's failure to provide a deaf interpreter. Lexington, Cohen says, is steering a middle course between ``hearing chauvinists'' and ``deaf militants.'' The former-who see deafness as a hated handicap- rally around the risky ``cochlear implant,'' a new electronic hearing-device fitted in young children the latter, who consider deafness to be an ethnic trait, oppose ``oralism'' (teaching deaf people to vocalize, long a staple at Lexington) in favor of signing. ![]() She writes at a time when Lexington is coming to terms with the deaf-pride movement, initiated in 1988 with a student rebellion at Gallaudet University, over the appointment of a hearing president. ![]() ![]() ![]() Cohen, who teaches at Emerson College, is well situated to be Lexington's chronicler: Her father, Oscar, is the school's superintendent her deaf grandfather, Sam, was a student there 75 years ago and the author herself-who can hear-attended classes there as a preschooler. Clunky title (American Sign Language for ``missing the boat'') aside: a sensitive report on one year in the life of N.Y.C.'s Lexington School for the Deaf. ![]()
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