Hurt Go Happy

In one of the Goodreads groups I’m in, we do a bookmark swap with other members. For one of the rounds, we each chose three favorite books for the bookmark maker to choose from. The person that was chosen as my recipient, Kellee, chose “The Giver” by Lois Lowry, “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, and “Hurt Go Happy” by Ginny Rorby. I’d read the other two books, and as much as I love them both, decided against using them as they are both so popular and well-known. “Hurt Go Happy” on the other hand, I’d never even heard of, and the premise interested me, so I decided to use it, sight-unseen. I read a preview chapter on B&N.com and when that was AMAZING, I ordered a copy.

Thirteen year old Joey is almost show more completely deaf and struggles to read lips in a world of hearing people because her mother refuses to allow her to learn sign language. Her mother is full of excuses, everything from “It’ll make you lazy so that you won’t be able to read lips to understand people who can’t sign,” to “It’ll show everyone that you’re disabled and they’ll pity you.” So, needless to say, Joey is isolated and largely ignored by people who aren’t able to communicate with her, until she meets Charlie, an elderly man who lives nearby and his chimpanzee, Sukari. This chance meeting changes all of their lives.

All I can say is “Wow”. If you know me at all, you know that I love a gut-wrenching story, one that breaks your heart and hollows you out. This book did all that and more. This book made me something of an emotional train-wreck. I feel like I need a thesaurus to even correctly assign my emotional states. I couldn’t breathe through the last half of this book, and I could barely even see. I can’t remember ever having cried so much during a book as I did with this one, but I didn’t feel manipulated or that Ginny Rorby was playing with my emotions. Rather I felt that she took this story, and all that it represents, incredibly seriously and portrayed it as honestly as possible. The fact that it crushed my soul is inevitable, because both subjects in the book are ones that nudge my overactive empathy gland into the mass-production red-zone. I’m an animal lover, and protector of small and defenseless things of all kinds, and so the events that occurred in this book were painful. I’m not deaf, but in her love for Sukari, I identified with Joey to the point where what happened to her felt like it was happening to me. And it felt incredibly real.

Whew. OK. Picking this back up later. I wrote all of that on June 24th, but I couldn’t stop being a weeping mess, so I set it aside. I couldn’t post it until Kellee’d received her bookmark anyway, which was definitely a good thing because it gave me a chance to put a little distance between this story and my heart, even though all I wanted was to rush in to talk to her about it, because it had affected me so strongly.

I don’t want to talk about the story itself in this review, although I will say that it is one that made me both proud and ashamed of being human. Proud because we have the capacity for learning and growth and empathy and understanding one another, but ashamed because we don’t use it, and worse, we exploit anything and anyone to reach an end. And regardless of how supposedly noble that end is, exploitation to reach that end is wrong. Horribly. I want everyone to read this book. It’s incredibly important. I know that many of you will read this review and say to yourselves, “Why on earth would I want to read that? She said it CRUSHED HER SOUL! O_O” but sometimes we need to have our souls crushed so that we can rebuild them better and containing more caring, compassion, and understanding than they had before.

That’s all I’m saying. Read this book. show less

Ok. I understand the worthy story of "rescuing" a wild animal from the evils of medical research. But for Heaven's sake, isn't the whole ethical issue about denying a chimpanzee the ability to socialise with its own species rather than trying to turn it into a pseudo human? Everything in this novel feels false - Ruth's character who waxes and wanes and then has an epiphany; the invisible Ray; Charlie, who should know better about assimilating wild animals into their own environments, and who puts an unfair burden on Joey when he dies; and Joey herself. Too long, too slow, too sentimental. Maybe I'm too harsh?

I loved this book. I have a degree in Anthropology, and one of the most disturbing aspects of my coursework was experiencing directly how our close relatives are held in captivity so we can "observe" and often experiment on them. Ms. Rorby bases her story on the real abuses that have occurred when chimpanzees and other primates are sent off to what are basically prisons to live out the rest of their lives once their initial usefulness is over. Ms. Rorby let's us see the world through a deaf girl's eyes, and relates her own developing relationship to the world to that of Sukari, the chimpanzee who is also learning sign language. The developing bond between the two is presented with a deft touch. The book is realistic in showing that not show more all families are happy or "normal."
The moral dilemma Sukari's captivity presents is painful but is ultimately resolved in a way that is realistic yet satisfying. Young readers will appreciate the happy ending. show less

Reviewed by Me for TeensReadToo.com

I had actually never heard of this title until I stumbled across it on the New York Public Library's "Books for the Teen Age" list for 2007. How I had missed it is a mystery, one that I can only chalk up to a lack of promotional advertising. Which is a horrible shame, because this book is one of the best I've read in years. If you haven't read it, you should. If you've never heard of it, don't worry, because you'll never forget it once you've read it.

I didn't have a lot of preconceived ideas going into the story. From the book jacket, I knew that HURT GO HAPPY was about a girl named Joey who was deaf, and who lived with a mother who forbid her to learn ASL, or American Sign Language. I knew that she show more met a chimpanzee named Sukari, who had been raised almost like a child by a man named Charlie, who had taught her ASL. What I didn't know was that this is the most emotional story I've ever read. It may have been a mistake to read this book at work (Don't worry, I'm allowed!), because I broke down in tears more times than I can count while reading it.

It's true that Joey is deaf. She wasn't born that way, but suffered from a childhood incident that isn't revealed until close to the end of the book. The reader knows that it must have been something bad, and it probably has something to do with why her mother, Ruth, doesn't want her learning to sign. That abhorrent, inane hatred of sign language is an attribute of Ruth's that had me disliking her from the first, and even though, over time, her stance ultimately changes, I never came to fully enjoy her as a character. That being said, though, she is one of the strongest characters of the story, and even though I fault her for many mistakes she made throughout HURT GO HAPPY, you can always understand, on some level, how she came to make them.

When Joey meets Charlie, an older doctor who lives close to their home in California, she is immediately taken with him. Not only does he know sign language, but he truly knows her -- and for a girl like Joey, cut off from so many people at home and at school by her inability to communicate easily, this is a treasure. When she meets Sukari, the chimp who is more like a child, she's smitten.

Over the course of months, Joey, Charlie, and Sukari bond as if they were their own tightly knit family, and in a way they are. There are obstacles to overcome, as always, that involve Joey's family, Charlie's health, and Sukari's relationship with them all. HURT GO HAPPY spans the course of years, and during that time we see a myriad of changes, from Joey learning to sign and attending a school for the deaf, from Charlie suffering from his bad heart, and from Sukari being taken from the only home she's ever known to ultimately end up in a research lab.

This isn't an easy story to read, but it's so heartfelt and true that you won't want to stop reading it. Although it's hard to say whether or not HURT GO HAPPY has a happy ending, it has one that is so true to life that you'll understand it's the only way it could have ended. The author makes it clear that this is a story based on true events, and that fact alone will have you thinking of the world in new ways. This book isn't just about being deaf, nor is it strictly about using animals for testing. It's about the choices we make, the burdens we carry, and the love that gets us through it all.

There is so much more I could tell you about this book. I could tell you that I ordered a copy of the AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE CONCISE DICTIONARY so that my daughter and I could learn more signs. I could tell you that I ordered books about other chimps who have lived their lives using ASL. I could mention that, although I had previously never thought much about testing on animals, I now can't stop thinking about it. I could also tell you that, genetically, chimpanzees share over 98% of the same DNA as humans. In the end, though, I'll just say that HURT GO HAPPY is, simply stated, amazing. Read it. You'll be glad you did. I promise. show less

A beautiful book. A wonderfully moving story. The chimpanzee is based on the life of a real chimpanzee raised as a human child. I loved the voice of the deaf girl who narrates it. It is actually the most understandable depiction of how ASL works that I've ever read.

The book is well written and flows very well. The characterizations were wonderful. All of the important people seemed complex and real.

I am going to recommend that both of my boys, 10 and 12, read this book. It is very thought provoking and I think brings up issues that are important for children to think about. Highly recommended.

Joey is used to being left out of conversations. She's been deaf since she was 6 and only fitfully reads lips. Her life changes drastically when she meets Sukari, a baby chimpanzee who uses American Sign Language. Suddenly Joey has a new friend and, more importantly, a reason to learn to sign. This is a heart-warming, ultimately triumphant look at a girl and an ape who need each other. This is a terrific read for anyone who loves animals and/or is interested in the challenges of being deaf.

Joey is a 14yr old girl who lost her hearing when she was seven. The first half of the story deals with her struggles with her mother over learning ASL and making friends with an old man and his chimpanzee (who can sign). The second half of the book (roughly) deals with Joey's fight to save the chimp from being used as a test subject for pesticides.

This book is young adult fiction through and through, based on my experience. There's enough school life, friends, and boys to have that area accounted for in the story, but it plays a very small role in the larger story -- which reflects reality, to some extent. Characters are mostly flat and static, though Joey is more round and dynamic -- though not in unexpected ways. Actually, I hate show more the mother character: she is ridiculously closed minded to ASL. She's so controlling, I don't understand how Joey could have "grown so close" to her mother, though if that's the only person you're able to communicate with, and you've shared some horrific experiences with them, you will development attachment.

Overall, a tear-jerker and endearing, and a good communicative story about being deaf and learning sign. show less