By Leila Fadel

Andres Torres spoke to students in the Curry Student Center Thursday about his experience of growing up as the “hearing” child of deaf parents.

The event was sponsored by the Latin American Student Organization (LASO). Torres was the second speaker of different perspectives from influential Latino and Latina Americans in a six speaker series this fall.

Torres has published books on subjects like the Puerto Rican movement, the Latino Diaspora and the New York political economy. But he didn’t want to lecture on the economy, public policy or the Puerto Rican movement. He wanted to share his story, his memoirs on his third culture — the deaf culture.

Torres was raised as the hearing son of two deaf Puerto Rican parents. Today, he is putting his talents to use as the coordinator of the Latino Studies program and the Center for Labor Research at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and a professor at the College of Public Community Service.

“We developed a different perspective on life,” Torres said. “I was an only child and I thought, ‘am I going to have to take care of my parents my whole life?’ There’s a saying amongst hearing children of deaf parents: ‘We get a head start on adulthood.'” He read three stories from his work in progress, his memoirs, which he hopes to publish in the next two years. His audience was a mix of over 75 students: Latino students, deaf students and ASL students. An interpreter stood by him, converting his words into sign language.

His stories touched on the difficulties of growing up as a “hearing deaf” in his Puerto Rican household in Washington Heights, N.Y. His parents had migrated to New York for an education, because in Puerto Rico there were no schools for the deaf at the time. He told students that his mother used to put her hands on his radio to feel the pounding of the music pouring from the speakers. His father, a Mets fan, would count on him to watch the ball game and keep track of the strikes, balls and score since there were no boxes at the top of the screen back then. He also shared his teenage angst for independence.

Torres said his parents thought their deafness was punishment from God for an ancestral sin. In one of his stories, he was a child riding the A-train in New York with his family. His family was conversing in sign, gesturing to each other while people stared at them. A group of children made fun of the signing family; they imitated their gestures and facial movements. Torres’ mother poked him on the shoulder, signed a sentence and then held up her middle finger and motioned for Torres to translate. “She says, ‘God will punish you for making fun of us and your children will be deaf and you know what that last sign is,'” he said.

Although Torres said he knows that his parents weren’t deaf because of a historic sin, he still thinks that being deaf was a hardship for them and for their family.

“My mother was angry and depressed about being deaf,” he said. Torres will use these experiences in his upcoming memoirs. He also will continue to use them to inform and enlighten students.

“Everyone is an ‘other’ at one time or another,” he said. “If you learn how to experience that in a positive way, you learn to have empathy.”