Cohen, Leah Hager 1967-

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Cohen, Leah Hager 1967-

PERSONAL:

Born 1967, in New York, NY; daughter of Oscar Cohen (a superintendent at the Lexington School for the Deaf); mother a doula; children: two sons, one daughter. Education: Hampshire College, B.A.; Columbia University School of Journalism, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Belmont, MA. Agent—Barney Karpfinger, Karpfinger Agency, 357 W. 20th St., New York, NY 10011.

CAREER:

Educator and author. Professor at Emerson College, Boston, MA, during the 1990s. Lesley University, M.F.A. program in creative writing, faculty mentor.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World was named one of the best books of 1994 by the American Library Association; four-time recipient of New York Times Notable Book citation.

WRITINGS:

Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World (nonfiction), Houghton (Boston, MA), 1994.

Glass, Paper, Beans: Revelations on the Nature and Value of Ordinary Things (nonfiction), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1997.

Heat Lightning (novel), Avon (New York, NY), 1997.

The Stuff of Dreams: Behind the Curtain of an American Community Theater (nonfiction), Viking (New York, NY), 2001.

Heart, You Bully, You Punk (novel), Viking (New York, NY), 2003.

Without Apology: Girls, Women, and the Desire to Fight (nonfiction), Random House (New York, NY), 2005.

House Lights (novel), W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2007.

Author of blog, Love as a Found Object.

ADAPTATIONS:

Glass, Paper, Beans has been produced, in abridged form, as an audio cassette, by Audio Editions.

SIDELIGHTS:

Leah Hager Cohen has won praise both for her novels and her vivid nonfiction books. Her first publication, Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, depicts Cohen's personal background as the hearing, second-generation American granddaughter of two deaf immigrants. The book itself chronicles a coming-of-age period at the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York City, a school her grandfather attended, and at which her father, Oscar, works as superintendent and her mother is also employed. Given this personal attachment and involvement with the institution in question, Cohen is well prepared to discuss the tremendous tumult the school experienced in 1988. At that time, tensions arose when those students involved in the deaf pride movement protested what they perceived as pressure to undergo risky cochlear implant surgery, which offered a chance at functional hearing. The protestors espoused the view that deafness is a unique condition and something to be proud of—not a defect to be fixed at any cost. Cohen cast these difficult issues against a human backdrop by focusing on two students at the Lexington School: Sofie, a Russian immigrant struggling gamely to learn both standard English and English sign language, and James, who must adjust to the major differences between the school and the ghetto in which he was raised.

According to numerous reviewers, Cohen provided a tight, evenhanded look into a world that most people will never see. A Kirkus Reviews contributor lauded Train Go Sorry as "an intimate portrait of a tight knit subculture that, ironically, is coming of age as it shrinks in size, the result of medical advances against meningitis and other causes of deafness—a situation that Cohen terms, with typical awareness of both sides, ‘bittersweet.’" A Publishers Weekly reviewer found Cohen's narrative somewhat "disjointed" but added that nevertheless, "her commitment and her descriptive gifts make her book memorable." Janis Ansell, writing in School Library Journal, recommended the book as an important sociological tool, stating that "a careful reading of Train Go Sorry provides exposure to the urban poor and our country's many immigrants (both past and present)."

In Cohen's next book, Glass, Paper, Beans: Revelations on the Nature and Value of Ordinary Things, she is inspired by the newspaper in her hand, the mug on her table, and the coffee steaming in that mug. Her thoughts lead her to investigate the personal stories that surround the origins of these diverse objects. She brings the reader to the world of Ruth, a glassworker in Ohio who might have made the glass from which Cohen drinks. The reader also meets Basilio, who tends to the coffee trees, and Brent, a Canadian logger. Accompanying these portraits of the human faces behind the objects that individuals use daily are fascinating facts behind the objects themselves and their manufacture.

Some critics questioned both the subject matter and Cohen's approach to it in Glass, Paper, Beans. While Train Go Sorry covered a topic with which Cohen was intimately acquainted, Glass, Paper, Beans is more remote. Chase Collins of the Chicago Tribune wrote: "Research and human interest can be a tough pair to marry…. Glass, Paper, Beans lacks the passionate intellect and felt experience of Train Go Sorry." Ilse Heidmann of Library Journal offered similar comments, saying: "Despite its unusual focus and well-constructed sentences, her book gets bogged down in a plethora of tedious details and unrelated observations." Yet other reviewers responded favorably to Cohen's attention to detail and wealth of commentary. A Publishers Weekly reviewer, who praised Cohen's "sparkling, nimble prose," observed that "Cohen's acumen in focusing on these specific people makes her journey and ours particularly pleasurable; she signals connections among commodities and geography and time, supply and demand, raw materials and market forces."

Cohen's first novel, Heat Lightning, was published in 1997. It tells the story of two orphaned sisters whose parents are said to have died while saving a boatload of partygoers. Narrated by the younger of the two sisters, whose nickname is Mole, Heat Lightning delves deeply into the tumultuous issues of identity that surround the onset of puberty, particularly in a small town. Because facts surrounding the drownings are somewhat vague, the two girls have constructed an elaborate set of fables that lionize their dead parents. During one particularly hot summer when the girls are twelve and eleven, this fable unravels disastrously, leaving Mole and her sister, Tilly, terribly uncertain about their beliefs and feelings. Adding to the problems are the Rouens, their new next-door neighbors. Even as Tilly is attracted to the Rouens' fourteen-year-old son, she must endure his father's attempt to seduce her. At the novel's conclusion, Mole and Tilly ultimately find peace with their family's past. Heat Lightning was received favorably by critics. A Kirkus Reviews contributor praised "Cohen's taut, unsentimental prose [which] brilliantly evokes Mole's strange imaginary world" and described Heat Lightning as "a radiant coming-of-age story in which every character rings true." A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that Cohen's "sensuous language bursts with charged imagery, as do her descriptions of a rural hamlet whose apparent summertime languor hides simmering emotions." Joanna Burkhardt, writing in Library Journal, described Heat Lightning as "beautifully written and told," and commented that the "vivid description and detail make these characters come alive."

Cohen followed Heat Lightning with another nonfiction work, The Stuff of Dreams: Behind the Curtain of an American Community Theater. The book takes a look at the world of an amateur theater company to explore what motivates people to put so much time and unpaid effort into drama. Cohen focuses on a conservative group in Massachusetts, Arlington Friends of the Drama, as they stage the controversial work M. Butterfly. According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, the author "is best at describing the endlessly delicate negotiations between the small but award-winning theater's director, actors, designers and stagehands." A writer for Entertainment Weekly, however, thought that "what steals the show are Cohen's quirky, humorous memories of her own theater work…. These chronicles most sparklingly capture theater's raison d'etre."

Cohen's second novel, titled Heart, You Bully, You Punk, is an examination of the interior lives of Ann, a sixteen-year-old who must be tutored at home due to an injury; Wally, her estranged father; and Esker, Ann's tutor, who has become reclusive in the wake of a painful love affair. As the story progresses, Wally and Esker are both surprised by their attraction to each other. Valerie Ryan, a reviewer for the Seattle Times, found Heart, You Bully, You Punk to be "beautifully written," and Benjamin Swett of the New York Times wrote that the novel "describes the mysterious, unpredictable, even mutinous ways people's hearts mess with their lives." He concluded that the book is "a lively, thoughtful pleasure," one that is "packed with details of contemporary life in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan." Beth Leistensnider, a writer for Booklist, commented: "In spare prose, Cohen demonstrates that there can be beauty even in sadness."

Cohen's 2005 work, Without Apology: Girls, Women, and the Desire to Fight, is part memoir and part examination of females in boxing. Cohen recounts her own time learning to box in the Boston area, and pairs it against the dreams and aspirations of several inner-city girls who share the ring with her. Additionally, Cohen investigates what scientists have to say about female aggression and compares this to her personal experiences with these adolescent and young teenage girls. Cohen's conclusions go against the grain of some research studies, finding that there are "parallels between sparring and coupling (both acts characterized by urgent paired movements and bodily contact)," as a Kirkus Reviews critic noted. The same contributor added that Cohen "concludes that without aggression we cannot meet, grow, or love." A Publishers Weekly reviewer also had praise for Without Apology, terming it "an incisive look at female psychology and the surprising world of female boxing."

Cohen returns to the novel with her 2007 book, House Lights, the story of a young woman who is trying to find her way in an acting career as her family is beginning to fall apart. New York Times reviewer Kathryn Harrison described this work as "a coming-of-age novel that casts a distinctly female eye on the form, not asking how far it's possible to travel from one's original self so much as considering the possibility that we may never really leave our child selves behind." For Library Journal contributor Keddy Ann Outlaw, this novel, "part bildungsroman, part family drama, … is a hit." A Kirkus Reviews critic deemed House Lights "heartfelt," while a less-impressed Publishers Weekly reviewer referred to it as "overly precious." However, Booklist contributor Carol Haggas had higher praise: "Cohen's captivating family drama thrums with a sensitive authenticity that is all the more provocative thanks to its poignant lyricism."

In an interview with Boston Globe writer David Mehegan, Cohen noted that all her work has a common theme: "That there are more substantial connections among us—acquaintances, strangers, close friends— than we are in the habit of noticing."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Annals of the Deaf, July, 1994, Kathryn Meadow-Orlans, review of Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, p. 320.

Antioch Review, winter, 1995, review of Train Go Sorry, p. 122.

Booklist, February 1, 1994, Nancy McCray, review of Train Go Sorry, p. 982; June 1, 1997, Donna Seaman, review of Heat Lightning, p. 1655; April 1, 2003, Beth Leistensnider, review of Heart, You Bully, You Punk, p. 1375; June 1, 2007, Carol Haggas, review of House Lights, p. 36.

Boston Globe, April 13, 1994, Irene Sege, interview with Leah Hager Cohen; August 29, 2007, David Mehegan, "In Writing and in Life, She Finds Balance: Leah Hager Cohen's Output Has Been Equal Parts Nonfiction and Novels."

Boston Herald, June 15, 1997, Erica Noonan, review of Heat Lightning, p. 59.

Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), June 1, 2003, Charity Vogel, "Promising Book Falters through Introspection," p. H5.

Chicago Tribune, February 23, 1997, Chase Collins, review of Glass, Paper, Beans: Revelations on the Nature and Value of Ordinary Things, p. 9.

Christian Science Monitor, November 24, 1997, review of Heat Lightning, p. 11; August 24, 1999, "Bootwriting Boot Camp Gets Authors in Shape," p. 17.

Entertainment Weekly, June 8, 2001, review of The Stuff of Dreams: Behind the Curtain of an American Community Theater, p. 70.

Jewish Week, August, 1995, "Lexington School for the Deaf."

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 1993, review of Train Go Sorry, p. 1500; May 15, 1997, review of Heat Lightning, pp. 736-737; March 1, 2003, review of Heart, You Bully, You Punk, p. 329; December 15, 2004, review of Without Apology: Girls, Women, and the Desire to Fight, p. 1176; June 15, 2007, review of House Lights.

Library Journal, January 1, 1997, Ilse Heidmann, review of Glass, Paper, Beans, p. 127; June 1, 1997, Joanna Burkhardt, review of Heat Lightning, p. 144; February 1, 2005, Kathy Ruffle, review of Without Apology, p. 87; July 1, 2007, Keddy Ann Outlaw, review of House Lights, p. 73.

Los Angeles Times, July 29, 2001, Sylvie Drake, "The Play's the Thing," p. 8.

New York Times, May 18, 2003, Benjamin Swett, review of Heart, You Bully, You Punk, p. 36; July 1, 2007, Kathryn Harrison, review of House Lights.

New York Times Book Review, March 13, 1994, Russ Rymer, review of Train Go Sorry, p. 1, Lynn Karpen, "Nothing about Deafness Was Frightening," p. 15; February 9, 1997, Jeanne Schinto, review of Glass, Paper, Beans, p. 12; November 23, 1997, Laurel Graeber, review of Heat Lightning, p. 42.

Publishers Weekly, December 6, 1993, review of Train Go Sorry, p. 62; November 25, 1996, review of Glass, Paper, Beans, p. 60; May 5, 1997, review of Heat Lightning, p. 193; April 23, 2001, review of The Stuff of Dreams, p. 62; April 28, 2003, review of Heart, You Bully, You Punk, p. 49; December 20, 2004, review of Without Apology, p. 46; May 21, 2007, review of House Lights, p. 32.

Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO), August 27, 1997, Joan Hinkemeyer, review of Heat Lightning, p. 15D.

School Library Journal, December, 1994, Janis Ansell, review of Train Go Sorry, p. 145; November, 1997, p. 149; June, 1998, Frances Reiher, review of Heat Lightning, p. 175.

Seattle Times (Seattle, WA), September 21, 1997, review of Heat Lightning, p. M2; June 29, 2003, Valerie Ryan, "Letting Go and Falling into Life, Love," p. K10.

Teachers College Record, fall, 1996, Kathe Jervis, review of Train Go Sorry, p. 180.

Theatre Journal, May, 2002, Terry Brino-Dean, review of The Stuff of Dreams, p. 329.

Times Literary Supplement, October 1, 1999, Christopher Hawtree, review of Glass, Paper, Beans, p. 31.

Washington Post, March 29, 1994, Susan Cahill, review of Train Go Sorry, p. WH16.