Dr. Andrés (Andy) Torres is Research Associate at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College of The City University of New York. He was on leave from Centro during 2008-2009 as Interim Director of the CUNY Latino Faculty Initiative. During 2007-2008 he served as Centro's Interim Director. Dr. Torres has taught in the fields of Puerto Rican/Latino Studies and Economics. His edited volume, Latinos in New England (2006), provides a comprehensive look at Latino population growth and socio-political trends in that region. Other publications include: The Puerto Rican Movement: Voices from the Diaspora (1998, co-editor), Workforce Development: Health Care and Human Services (New England Journal of Public Policy, Special Issue, 1997, co-editor), and Between Melting Pot and Mosaic: African Americans and Puerto Ricans in the New York Political Economy (1995). Dr. Torres has written articles, op-ed pieces, and book reviews on urban political economy, labor markets, social movements, and Latino public policy. Most recently, he co-authored the Centro Research Report, “Puerto Rican Outmigration from New York City: 1995-2000”.
Dr. Torres was at the University of Massachusetts from 1991 to 2005, where he was professor in the College of Public and Community Service. From 1998-2005, he was also director of the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy, a leading Latino research and policy center in New England (http://www.gaston.umb.edu).
In prior years, Dr. Torres served as a Research Associate at Centro (1986-1991) and directed programs in community organizations and public agencies, including ASPIRA of New York, Inc., The Community Service Society, and the Private Industry Council. He received his doctorate in economics from the New School for Social Research, a master's degree in economics from New York University, and a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Manhattan College. Raised in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, Dr. Torres was born in the South Bronx of deaf parents who emigrated from Puerto Rico during the 1930s and 1940s. His was among the first deaf families to come to the United States from the Caribbean. Dr. Torres, whose first language is Sign Language, grew up in a tri-cultural environment in which Spanish, English, and Sign were spoken. His family memoir based on these experiences was recently published, Signing in Puerto Rican: A Hearing Son and His Deaf Parents. The description can be accessed at http://gupress.gallaudet.edu/bookpage/SIPRbookpage.html.
About the book
Signing in Puerto Rican
A Hearing Son and His Deaf Family
a new book by Dr. Andrés Torres
The only child of deaf Puerto Rican migrants, Dr. Andrés Torres grew up in New York City in a large, extended family that included several deaf aunts and uncles. In Signing in Puerto Rican: A Hearing Son and His Deaf Family, he opens a window into the little known culture of Deaf Latinos chasing the American dream. Like many children of deaf adults (codas), Dr. Torres loved his parents deeply but also longed to be free from being their interpreter to the hearing world. Dr. Torres’s story is unique in that his family communicated in three languages. The gatherings of his family reverberated with “deaf talk,” in sign, Spanish, and English. What might have struck outsiders as a strange chaos of gestures and mixed spoken languages was just normal for his family.
Dr. Torres describes his early life as one of conflicting influences in his search for identity. His parents’ deep involvement in the Puerto Rican Society for the Catholic Deaf led him to study for the priesthood. He later left the seminary as his own ambitions took hold. Dr. Torres became very active in the Puerto Rico independence movement against the backdrop of the Civil Rights struggle and protest against the Vietnam War. Throughout these defining events, Dr. Torres’s journey never took him too far from his Deaf Puerto Rican family roots and the passion of arms, hands, and fingers filling the air with simultaneous translation and understanding.
Dr. Andrés Torres is Researcher at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, New York, NY.
PUBLISHER:
Gallaudet University Press, 11030 S. Langley Avenue, Chicago, IL 60628
ISBN 1-56368-417-9, 978-1-56368-417-3, 5½ x 8½ trade paperback, 200 pages
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