Wanting More of Jerry in Echoes of Jerry

At age 50, Judah Leblang experimented with a series of assistive devices to find a hearing aid best suited to his hearing loss. The experience kicked him into an exploration of his Uncle Jerry’s life as a deaf man growing up in Ohio in the 30’s and 40’s.

The two men shared both a physical disability and a place as the outsider: Jerry as the deaf athlete and disabled student at a high school attended by predominantly hearing students, Leblang as a gay man struggling with his sexuality, born some 20 years after his uncle.

Echoes of Jerry is an even-paced narrative of Leblang’s early life in Ohio, his grappling with his sexuality in his twenties and thirties, his limited but impactful interactions with his uncle, his own experiences within the deaf community as a teacher, and his eventual work as a writer in Boston.

While Leblang’s story is fleshed out here, Jerry’s is not as much, used instead as a spring board for Leblang to tell his own tale. This reader was eager to see the author delve deeper into Jerry’s stories, to hear more of the voices that made up Jerry’s world, but those voices are rarely heard, and when they are, they leave the reader wanting more.

While the connections between Jerry and Judah are somewhat unsteady, what comes through is Judah’s appreciation for Jerry, for his place as an outsider that gave Judah strength to forge his own, different path from those around him. The author feels a debt of gratitude to his uncle, and it is sufficiently paid here.

Thank you to Judah Leblang for leading me to Echoes of Jerry. Leblang was my instructor at Grub Street during a workshop in 2018.