Week 14- Train Go Sorry

"I am a hearing student (or deaf 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."


I will be starting off this essay by addressing what “Train Go Sorry” means. In ASL this means missing the boat. This is a phrase that Cohen uses to explain and demonstrate the missed connections between the deaf and the hearing. The person that she is referring to in this story is James Taylor in chapter 12. She tells how James goes to visit his brother who is jail, who he has not visited for more than seven months since he got arrested. When James arrives and follows the process one goes through to visit an inmate, he winds up waiting hours before he is told that he is unable to visit his brother because he was in court and they redirects him back to the bus so he can leave. As mentioned on page 188, James understands what has happened in a single phrase: train go sorry. Some may also say train gone sorry or train go zoom, in any case it is the ASL equivalent of “you missed the boat.” Also mentioned on the same page, James life is a story of missed connections, the boat has set sail without him. She says this because he was unable to successfully visit his brother until the third try. James is a boy who comes from poverty and winds up in Lexington referred by his former school, St. Joseph School for the Deaf in the Bronx. He started at Lexington when he was fourteen years old and pre-freshmen. As she says in chapter 3, page 33, James missed 148 days his first year and when he did show he would be hungry, wore the same clothes and unable to concentrate. This worried the staff and they made a home visit only to see the situation that his mother was in and offered housing for him at Lexington, where he has progresses and will graduate.



The main person in the book is Leah Hager Cohen. She is a hearing person but was raised in a deaf culture due to her grandparents who were deaf. Her grandparents raised her father Oscar Cohen, who also is a hearing person, in a deaf setting at Lexington and he followed it. Leah Cohen longed deeply for a place among the deaf people. When she was born she was taken straight from the hospital to Lexington School for the Deaf, so as far as she was concerned her birthright was sealed, she thought she was bound to the deaf community. As she grew older she realized that this was not true, even though she rose in a deaf community she could never be considered as one of them and was restricted from belonging to that community. Leah Cohen walked in a deaf person shoes through many people her grandfather, her father, James, and Sofia. She did not feel privileged because she could hear; she felt this paled in comparison the privilege of being close and of sharing that common experience with the other children. This made her feel left out and seemed to her at the age of five that it was a mean gift. Like Leah mentions on page 11, the time that she felt most alienated as a student at Lexington was at story time. Kids pulling chairs up to the table, plugging in their hearing aids, receivers strapped around their chests and heads crowned with blue ear phones, the children leaned together, tightly connected, all joined to the same circuit. Leah felt that her ability to hear was not the only factor that set her apart from the deaf; she felt it was the fact that she spoke the teacher’s language. She even posed pebbles as hearing aids and put them in her ears and even learned ASL but this just made her realize how different she really was from them. For the deaf people their main thing at school was to learn English and this she already knew.



The image that I won’t ever forget was when James went to go visit his brother in jail, in chapter 12. How he had to take the bus to get to Rikers Island and once there waited for hours and then goes through this ridiculous process before they let you in. First you wait in this long line before you get to the counter to see if the inmate can receive a visitor. Then you sign in and after you wait some more before you are able to visit. After you go through metal detectors and going through all that, just so that they will let you through and let you visit an inmate they turn you away. I remember the first I went to a jail to visit a family member I felt scared and confused. I went through this long process to see if I was able to visit the person then to be told after all that, that this person can not have a visit due to who knows what reasons. Also like James the actual first time that I was able to accomplish the actual visit I was asked my age and given the cold shoulder by the guards. I was lead into a room where they seated you at a table and while I was waiting I took in the atmosphere. Everyone was watched by guards and if they got to close to each other the guard would walk over and separate them. At the end of the visit I was also glade not to be the one left there or the one who missed the boat.



Five things that everyone should know about ASL or deaf culture is 1) the states recommends that students be tested once every three years, but Lexington conducts hearing exams annually for students under the age of eight or every two years for older students. 2) There are implants that deaf people can get if they qualify approved by the FDA in 1990 for children between the ages of 2 and 7. During the implantation, the tiny hairs of the inner ear that normally activate the auditory nerve get torn and crushed. Once this happens the effects are irreversible, even if the device is removed. What ever little hearing might have existed will have been obliterated. So if the implant is unsuccessful than the child won’t ever be able to benefit from a regular hearing aid. 3) When linguist validated ASL as an authentic language 25 years ago, many schools for the deaf made efforts to incorporate signing into their curricula. They borrowed ASL signs and wind up inventing clumsy hybrids such as MCE, SEE, and PSE. 5) Lexington was founded by Hannah and Isaac Rosenfeld, a German Jewish couple. I also found interesting how big of a culture deaf people have and due to how fluent they can sign is how they get divide into their groups just like hearing people do. There are deaf people who can hear, not speak or sign but can lip read really well, some can speak, sign and hear, some can read lips well, not hear or speak but can sign, some can sign but not read lips or hear, there is a few I do not know them all but I found that interesting because I thought they were all people who could not hear and there way of communication was by signing. I guess like they say in the book the deaf can do anything that a hearing person does but hear.




Class Review:
1) Erin- would like to attend Gallaudet University if she had the opportunity.
2) Alex- thinks that Matlin is a remodel for a lot of deaf people.
3) Stephen- has a cousin who taught their daughter sign language when she was baby.
4) Catherine- wants to learn sign language by 2010.
5) Megan –thought the Indiana Visual Arts clip was inspiring.
6) Alexa- thought it was impressive that a one year old knew 30 signs and 20 words.
7) Daniel- thought the baby is an amazingly talented child.
8) Jessica-thought that the boys were very confident and in sync on stage in the clip sign language singers.
9) Mario-thought video 2 of dancing with the stars was interesting.
10) Kimmie- I learned that in video 3 Tyler West is an ISD student who won the t-shirt design contest.