Guest Blog from Jennifer Rosner, author of If A Tree Falls

Originally published: Friday, June 4, 2010, CarolineLeavittville

Nearly every day, for the five years it took me to write If A Tree Falls, I marveled at the idea that I was writing a memoir. Not only were my childhood memories few and far between (none prior to the age of ten), but I was a trained philosopher, meaning my only exposure to writing was of the most torturous, academic variety. I certainly wasn’t a “creative writer.” Yet, from the moment this project began until its completion, with my book now appearing on bookstore shelves, the words expressing the emotional heart of my memories flowed with relative ease. Perhaps it was their time. Or perhaps, becoming a mother just changes everything.

I started writing If A Tree Falls shortly after my daughter, Sophia, was born and diagnosed as deaf. My first attempt to grapple in words with her deafness, and with the many decisions we faced in raising her, was a watershed event for me. The expression of my tangle of worries, fears, and (did I dare?) hopes, left me exhausted yet energized and relieved. Nothing like when I finished a philosophy paper! In the course of the next few years, my husband and I had another deaf daughter, and I discovered deafness in my family tree (previously unknown to me) traveling back to the 1800s in Eastern Europe.