If a Tree Falls: A Family’s Quest to Hear and Be Heard, by Jennifer Rosner
“This wrenching journey into deafness from the standpoint of a mother, a wife, a daughter, a philosopher, and a Jew explores the meaning of sound in a soundless world.
If a Tree Falls shows the extent to which what we hear comes not only from our contemporaries but from the people who came before us and those who will succeed us.”
—Ilan Stavans, author of On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language
If a Tree Falls is not a maudlin tearjerker, but a matter-of-fact account of hearing parents coming to terms with having two deaf children, as well as an inquiry into the lives of deaf people in the author's own familial past.
Jennifer Rosner has a Ph.D. in philosophy and she uses her experiences with her daughters as a jumping off point to explore her family history and relationships, what it means to communicate: what is hearing and what is listening. She makes her experience: universal.
Narrated by Anne Marie Lee.
--Willow Pennell
