Raymond Luczak

a novel

Men with their hands

Moffatt Clarke

Book Report for Deaf Culture and Community, VCC Deaf Studies and ASL Program

I decided to read and review the novel, Men with their Hands, by Deaf author Raymond Luczak, published by Rebel Satori Press in 2009.
I first became aware of the author in 1993 with the publication of Eyes of Desire, A Deaf Gay and Lesbian Reader, which Luczak edited. I chose to read this novel because I had never before read a piece of fiction written by a Deaf author and because the subject matter was of great interest. The novel tells the stories of a number of gay men of my generation, men who came of age just before and during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. 
Luczak introduces us to Michael, a young Deaf gay man growing up in a small town in the USA who dreams of moving to New York City. His life is familiar to many gay readers, fraught with all the anxiety of being young and gay. Michael is different, however, in that he is deaf, wears hearing aids, is subjected to extensive audiological tests, discovers sign language from a deaf stranger and learns about closed captioning from his elementary school’s janitor who is also deaf.
Michael finally does move to New York City to attend university. Meanwhile, Luczak introduces his readers to a wide array of interesting young and old, male and female Deaf characters as well as Rex, an ASL interpreter who is overwhelmed, numbed and traumatized by the tsunami of AIDS wrecking havoc among his friends and clients. 
Readers learn as much about HIV/AIDS as we do about the Deaf gay culture and community of the 1980s in New York. We see the characters use TTY-voice relay to communicate with hearing parents. We learn about the importance of Gallaudet College to one character’s life. We get inside the heads and hearts of men who face the scourge of AIDS with terror and bravery, whose lives reveal the gamut of human emotion from love to fear, how friends become family in the face of sickness and death.
It’s a story told thousands of times in countless books and articles, movies and documentaries about the lives of gay men fighting, losing and winning against HIV/AIDS. For those of us who were there, it stirs strong emotions and recollections of tremendous sadness and courage and love. 
Luczak’s story, however, is innovative and compelling because it tells this familiar story from a Deaf perspective. In fact, the story is told from a number of Deaf perspectives as the various characters live in the Deaf world, the hearing world, and the world in between that only can be understood by people who live there.
An interesting aspect of Men with their Hands is the “spoken” dialogue. Although the book is written in the English language, the author however has his characters use ASL syntax which makes the book very interesting and compelling.
“Me-miss you!” … “How you?” … “O-k” … “O-hhhh. Wrong-wrong?” … “Me bring some S-m-i-r-n-o-f-f vodka. Anybody want i-c-e?” … “Why you-all go drink-drink-drink?” “What about you?” … “Not m-o-o-d.” 
Sometimes, it takes a strong drink or two to deal with the sad truth that was HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. 
A quick and easy read, I recommend this novel to anyone interested in gay Deaf culture during the early days of the epidemic.

Men with their hands a novel

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