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I'm Jesse Thorn.

The comedian Mocha Cashier has a new memoir that just came out.

The title pretty much says it all.

It's called Cashier in the Rye, the true tale of a white boy from Oakland who became a

drug addict, criminal, mental patient, and then turned 16.

As you might imagine from that subtitle Mocha was sort of a problem child in school.

Also, his mother was deaf and he didn't hesitate to take advantage of that fact.

I would be called into a parent's teacher conference with my mom of course is deaf so

she needed some translation, but the school system didn't think that there was a flaw

in the plan of just asking the subject of the parent teacher conference to also translate

the information to the parent who, as if I didn't have a vested interest in not seeming

like a huge jerk, so they would say something.

You can't just be like, your son's great and we love him very much because there would

be an obvious problem there.

So I would sort of shade it.

They would say your son is becoming a severe behavioral problem and has been absent in

school 30% of the classes this year and I would translate something like, we think your

...