Bell, C., & Lasky, D. (2014). El Deafo. New York, NY: Amulet Books.
This is the first graphic novel that I read and I must say, I enjoyed it.
I'm an English teacher and on the first week of school, which was last week, I had my seniors write an essay on education and how an experience they've has had made them realize the importance of education. As they wrote, a student asked for help. So I came over to her desk and read the two paragraphs that she had written. It turns out that she started her essay expressing how when she started school she was aware that she was different than the rest of her classmates. She felt self conscious and hated being different. She tried to hide this and that she dreaded anyone noticing. Intrigued, huh? Yeah, me too!
As it turned out, she had a hearing disability and has, up to this point, had to wear hearing aids. Although there were no chords coming from her ears to a box hanging around her chest, she felt the need to hide her ears behind her long hair. She talked about how much she hated them and even wished they would get lost, or stolen, or that they would be crushed under a heavy object so that she would not have to wear them again. Her hatred for her hearing aids went on for years until one day she realized how silly she had been for hating something that helped her so much. This story warmed my heart and sympathized for her immediately. And then yesterday, I pick up El Deafo and immediately think of Justice and her story. Cece and Justice were alike in so many ways.
A few years back, in 2011, I had a student, this time a boy. And he also wore a device just like Cece did, and I too, had to wear a microphone during class so that he could hear me. Unfortunately, this experience was a rather negative one for me, not because I minded, on the contrary, I was glad to help him. In this case, after reading this novel, I feel as though this young boy never overcame the stage where he saw this apparatus as an enemy. He liked working independently and would even turn off the device so that he wouldn't hear me, or he would tell me that it broke down, and then I would see another teacher wearing the microphone. I wished then, and I wish now, that I could have done more to help him, but this boy never allowed me the opportunity to reach out to him.
Cece's story is heartbreaking. As a parent, one of my greatest fears is for something to happen to my children. From a healthy girl, in the blink of an eye, it all changed. Fortunately, the only consequence of her disease was hearing loss. It could have been worse. Many times we take things for granted, our health, our healthy children, the abilities we have that help us carry on through life with no setbacks.
In the case of Cece, it is endearing to see how with the help of her phonic ear she felt like a super hero, just because with it she had the ability to hear. So what anyone who can hear takes for granted, she cherished dearly. Of course, being that she was young, and at that age you want to fit in, she hated that it made her difference from the rest, but without realizing it, she was grateful for the ability of hearing.
When tragedy struck, yes, tragedy, she was devastated at the fact that she no longer had her phonic ear. She was even more devastated to know that she was going to have to do without it for a few weeks. And this reminded me of my Nathan, my 9 year old son. He wears glasses with a pretty high prescription. Last May he lost a lens at school that we never found. Naturally, I had it replaced immediately but he went a good two weeks, almost three without his glasses. One morning he came up to me with a cheery voice and said, "Momma, I can almost see as well as I do with my glasses." My poor baby was already adjusting to seeing without his glasses. It broke my heart.
When Cece went four weeks and three days without her device, she learned to appreciate how great it was. She learned that it was something she needed in her life, and learned to accept it. So when she finally received it, she walks with pride in front of the class to give her teacher her microphone.
When we think about why she felt as self conscious as she did of wearing this device, we can wonder what her reason was. Naturally, humans can be inconsiderate and lack compassion. For instance, when Coach Potts breaks her microphone, the best he can do is utter a "whoopsie" or when her classmates ask, "Oh you're the deaf kid?"
We need to be more accepting. We need to learn to be more human. In the end, Cece was successful at overcoming her hatred for her situation, for the device that helped her, but it took her years to be able to do that. She had to hide behind a secret imaginative identity in order for her to be okay with her disability. And the question is why are we forced to do such things? Everyone should feel like a super hero, whether we are or not. As simple as that.
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