Pauline Leader

Pauline Leader (October 16, 1908–July 13, 2001) was a writer and poet, noted for her memoir, And No Birds Sing, which chronicles her growing up in Bennington, Vermont as an outcast daughter of Jewish immigrants and her bohemian life in Greenwich Village, subsequent to becoming deaf at age 12. Her work pioneered understanding the perspective of people with disabilities and represented a step towards recognizing the need to accommodate them in society.

Early life Leader was born in New York City on October 16, 1908, to Isaac and Frieda, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The family moved to Bennington, Vermont, where her mother ran a boarding house and a butcher shop. Her father became the rabbi of Bennington's first synagogue. Her mother died at age 39. Her father beat her frequently. She had four younger siblings.

Greenwich Village Upon her arrival in Manhattan, Leader stayed in a series of modest rooming houses in Greenwich Village, while looking for work—difficult for a deaf person to find. She typically found work in sweatshops and was often fired, owing to misunderstandings arising out of her deafness. The conditions that she experienced informed much of her writing about such workplaces. gave her an entry point into the world of writers, artists, and other unconventional people who spent time there. Among those whom she befriended were writers Maxwell Bodenheim, Tom Boggs, and Joe Gould. Initially, she was an observer on the sidelines, typically for one hour after midnight and filled notebooks with observations not just about the bohemian crowd, but also of the working-class people who frequented the eatery. During this period, she attempted to promote poets and their poetry through readings, contests and a venue for posting poetry. Fearing that she was pregnant, she reported to a clinic, which led to her detention as a "wayward" woman, only to be released when her period arrived. This experience added to the societal trauma that she observed and took notes on in Greenwich Village. A 2016 reprint added a biography in the foreword and an essay on the work's significance in the afterword. Routledge published a London edition in 1932. The book featured a portrait of Leader by Lavarack on its dustcover. The work, which chronicled her experiences amidst the working class and with the bohemians in the Village, attracted the attention of the nascent author, Millen Brand.

Leader with notes and typewriter. Photo by son, Jonathan Brand. Two more children ensued, a daughter who died in infancy (1935) and a son, Daniel (1937). She wrote a novel, The Natives, which was never published and whose manuscript she destroyed. During this period, Brand published a successful novel, The Outward Room, based on the experiences of friends who had been institutionalized, but with substantial borrowings from And No Birds Sing. Brand's book was one of redemption of the main character, in contrast to Leader's portrayal of a life of stigma. With Leader's life in the shadow of Brand's, the marriage began to falter in April, 1939, when the family moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania. Leader became a regular contributor to Franklin P. Adams' literary column, "The Conning Tower", in the New York Post. By September, 1939, the couple separated and Leader moved with the children back to New York City, where she wrote two more novels, Roses Grow Deep and A Song for My Land, that were praised for their quality of writing but were deemed unpublishable because of their pessimistic tone—these, she destroyed. In 1942, she moved her family back to Bennington. This was published by Vanguard in 1946 with illustrations by Garth Williams. She then worked in a shoe factory to help put her son, Daniel, through MIT. Leader died at age 92 on July 13, 2001 in Portland, Oregon, where her son Jonathan lived. Leader's work pioneered viewing people with disabilities as a minority population, whose civil rights should be protected.