Summary Of Are You Listening By Aciman

“Are You Listening,” by Andre Aciman (March 17, 2014) is a story about his mother’s relationship with society and Andre. Andre begins the story with how he found out his mother was deaf. He assumed that the person who gave him the “official report” of his mom being deaf was his grandmother. Aciman’s other assumption, is that he found out by the way people treated her on the street; “Some whistled when she walked by…[and] when she shopped and spoke with the monotone, guttural voice of the deaf, people laughed.” It is a mystery how long it took his mother to realize that she was not speaking like everyone else.
Aciman’s mother was born in Alexandria in 1924, “she belonged to a middle-class, French-speaking Jewish family.” Her parents did everything