Leah Hager Cohen - Free Library Land Online - Reference

Train Go Sorry

Sat, 01 Jan 1994 11:30:30 +0200

A "remarkable and insightful" look inside a New York City school for the deaf, blending memoir and history (The New York Times Book Review).

Leah Hager Cohen is part of the hearing world, but grew up among the deaf community. Her Russian-born grandfather had been deaf—a fact hidden by his parents as they took him through Ellis Island—and her father served as superintendent at the Lexington School for the Deaf in Queens. Young Leah was in the minority, surrounded by deaf culture, and sometimes felt like she was missing the boat—or in the American Sign Language term, "train go sorry."

Here, the award-winning writer looks back on this experience and also explores a pivotal moment in deaf history, when scientific advances and cultural attitudes began to shift and collide—in a unique mix of journalistic reporting and personal memoir that is "a must-read" (Chicago Sun-Times).

"The history of the...

Strangers and Cousins

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 04:18:39 +0200

"A perfect summer novel: funny and tender but also provocative and wise. . . One of the most hopeful and insightful novels I've read in years."-Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Serious yet joyous comedy, reminiscent of the Pultizer-winning Less" - Out Magazine
A novel about what happens when an already sprawling family hosts an even larger and more chaotic wedding: an entertaining story about family, culture, memory, and community.
In the seemingly idyllic town of Rundle Junction, Bennie and Walter are preparing to host the wedding of their eldest daughter Clem. A marriage ceremony at their beloved, rambling home should be the happiest of occasions, but Walter and Bennie have a secret. A new community has moved to Rundle Junction, threatening the social order and forcing Bennie and Walter to confront uncomfortable truths about the lengths they would go to to maintain harmony.
Meanwhile, Aunt...

Heart, You Bully, You Punk

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 11:30:29 +0200

A high school girl, her father, and her math teacher: through this unlikely trio, Leah Hager Cohen charts the complexities of the human heart as only she can.
Esker (she prefers to go solely by her last name) is a thirty-one-year-old high school teacher at the Prospect School in Brooklyn who, after various heartbreaks and disappointments, has found a quiet resolve in her lonely spinster routine. But when a mysterious fall leaves her star math student injured and housebound until exams, Esker begins tutoring the precocious teenager at home. And soon, much against her will, she begins falling edgily, haltingly in love with the girl's father.
Charged with Esker's own irreverence and wit, Heart, You Bully, You Punk sweeps us irresistibly into her profound and wistful struggle to unite the rest of her self with her unruly heart.

To & Fro

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 13:16:31 +0300

A tale of two girls—one living in a parable, the other in Manhattan

Ani, journeying across a great distance accompanied by a stolen kitten, meets many people along her way, but her encounters only convince her that she is meant to keep searching. Annamae, journeying from childhood to young adulthood alongside her mother, older brother, and the denizens of her Manhattan neighborhood, never outgrows her yearning for a friend she cannot describe. From their different worlds, Ani and Annamae reach across the divide, perhaps to discover—or perhaps to create—each other.

Told in two mirrored narratives that culminate in a new beginning, To & Fro unleashes the wonders and mysteries of childhood in a profound exploration of identity, spirituality, and community.

The Grief of Others

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:08:23 +0200

In the tradition of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, a gripping, generous, and provocative novel chronicling the grief that follows the death of a newborn-and that leads to a family's emotional reawakening.It begins with loss. John and Ricky Ryrie are stricken by the death of their third child, only fifty-seven hours after his birth. Struggling to regain a semblance of normalcy, they find themselves pretending not only that little has changed, but that nothing was wrong before this baby came so briefly into their lives. Yet in the aftermath of his death, long-suppressed uncertainties about their relationship come roiling to the surface. A dreadful secret emerges concerning what Ricky knew about her pregnancy and concealed from everyone, even John. And the couple's two older children, grappling with the tensions around them, begin to act out in exquisitely, perhaps courageously, idiosyncratic ways. Ultimately, though, the grief that was initially so isolating brings the...