Perhaps learning both lip-reading and sign language would have helped me and my classmates communicate more comfortably than we could with lip-reading alone. Writing El Deafo made me realize that I wish I had learned sign language when I was in kindergarten, before I became so self-conscious about everything to do with my deafness. Success in lip-reading depends on so many factors: who is talking, how familiar you are with the person talking, where the person is talking, how animated the person is while talking, the presence or absence of background noise and distractions and light, and on and on. It was 1975, and whether it was the thinking of the time or the particular reasoning of that school system (or both), lip-reading was in, and sign language was out.īut lip-reading is not always easy. However, something that I don’t talk about directly is that our teacher did not teach us any sign language. In the class, we were taught how to lip-read. The summer after everything changed, my parents enrolled me in a kindergarten class for deaf kids, and that decision became the basis for how I dealt with-and still deal with-my deafness. I was lucky to have a little bit of time as a hearing person to acquire some language, because as soon as I lost my hearing, communication with my family and friends became really, really tricky. I lost my hearing to meningitis when I was four and a half years old. I worry about what other deaf people will think of the book. I’m very excited about the release of my graphic novel memoir, El Deafo.

El deafo by cece bell