by Jeanne Henry, Hofstra University & Keriann Boorum, freelance ASL/English interpreter, Hofstra University
While a handful of YA authors have written about or at least included Deaf characters, Deaf teens remain underrepresented in YA literature. Unfortunately, the depictions that do exist are not as accurate as teachers might like, which serves neither the Deaf nor hearing communities. If hundreds of YA authors were suddenly inspired to depict Deaf teens, both so that these teens might see themselves in the pages of books and so hearing teens could learn a thing or two about Deaf people, they would encounter an immediate challenge: the foundation of Deaf culture, American Sign Language (ASL), cannot be written. This poses some challenges in writing dialogue for authors who want to explore the worlds of Deaf characters.
One solution has been to simply write ASL dialogue in English. In Feathers (2007), for example, author Jacqueline Woodson italicizes the signed dialogue to distinguish it from spoken exchanges. While this is helpful for hearing readers, Deaf readers may not feel as well served, since this practice perpetuates the misconception that ASL is signed English, which persists among the hearing community, and even some mainstream educators. While we think the poetic license—even of linguistic misrepresentation—is a well-meaning choice and inclusion is better than exclusion, technological affordances, such as texting, can provide a more realistic alternative for YA authors who want to include Deaf characters and conversations in their fiction.
An example of a book that does just this is Josh Berk’s The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin (2010). Like others in the Deaf community, Will Halpin, Berk’s (2010) protagonist, uses his “Clony” (a circa 2002 device resembling a Sony Clié), to communicate with Devin, a hearing friend and, in some tight circumstances during the lightly mystery-driven plot, to communicate with his friend Ebony, who is also Deaf. Will and friends also use lip-reading, fingerspelling of English, and writing on paper, a dry erase board, and in the dirt, and so Berk (2010) gives his characters, both hearing and Deaf, a range of creative, resourceful, and reasonably realistic means to communicate. Berk (2010) also makes sparse use of signed conversation—sometimes represented in English and, more often, simply summarized in English through Will’s first person narration.
While Will is bilingual—fluent in ASL and English—and his texting with Devin is as conventionally English as he cares to make it—this would not be the case for all Deaf teens, who might be more comfortable communicating in texting that borrowed more heavily from ASL. We don’t have data on this—we couldn’t find any—but Keriann’s sense, garnered through her experience as a professional ASL interpreter, is that Deaf people who are bilingual, will use the text recipient’s language preference as a guide for their message creation, and when communicating with other ASL natives, the tendency would be to use non-English grammar. Unfortunately, neither of us has ever seen this method of code switching represented in a YA novel, and as a research topic, it goes begging.
How authors go about depicting signed language is only one complication when writing about Deaf characters; how and where this communication occurs has to be given creative consideration. While the Deaf community has a range of communication devices and strategies to choose from—TTY machines, relay networks, email, and video chatting for example—a smartphone allows unprecedented mobility to put a Deaf protagonist at the center of even an action-driven plot. Will gets shot at while surveilling a potential suspect and coordinates a recon mission that has to be aborted, cracking wise all the way. A part of the powerful appeal of Smartphones for the Deaf community is that they can be used for messaging without modification, or stigma (Power, Power, and Horstmanshof, 2007). The smartphone is an unwitting affordance, since it was not designed to serve the messaging purpose to which the Deaf community, and everyone else, has chosen to put it, but it could serve another unexpected purpose of making it far easier for YA authors to depict an underrepresented community.
The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin (2010) is a funny book, and Will, Devin, and Ebony are highly likable characters. With one exception, making lip reading seem like something of a game Will and Ebony are particularly good at rather than a necessary skill to understand the speaking world, Berk’s (2010) depiction of a Deaf teen’s world is very strong. Will and Ebony’s deafness is not something that they want to change or “fix,” and Berk (2010) alludes to some of the heightened in-group discussions about identity within the Deaf community. Will is constantly aware that he is left out of conversations and that those he has access to are often limited. As the narrator, Will frequently reports conversations in which “(something, something)” indicates what he missed because of a drooping mustache, mumbling, head turning, or any of the other things that can confound those who rely on lip reading.
There is much between the pages of The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin (2010) for hearing readers to learn about Deaf etiquette, such as the need to speak to a Deaf person, rather than his/her ASL interpreter. And teens, in particular, shouldn’t be surprised if a Deaf friend doesn’t find it that hilarious that they only want to learn dirty signs. But there is much here for Deaf readers, too. Will has a family that loves him, yet he can only communicate fully with one parent, which is not that unusual for a Deaf child of hearing parents. And while Will can speak, he prefers not to, since his efforts to so do have not been met with a positive response from the hearing; he refuses to see his reluctance to speak as a sign that he is not proud of his deafness. Central to the events of the book is Will’s decision to stop attending a school for the Deaf in order to attend a general education high school, but as he notes, the fact that he has an IEP suggests he is “still on the banks of the mainstream” (Berk, 2010, p.6). Will is steadily paddling without leaving anything behind.
Historically, the Deaf community has been linguistically isolated from the mainstream, which has meant that, with the exception of a few fortunate people, such as ASL interpreters, Deaf educators, and hearing parents, the rise of Deaf culture has been witnessed largely from within. And so, this particular community’s story of resilience, cultural purchase, and collective progress has only been available to hearing folk who going looking for it. We hope technology, and awareness, will inspire more YA authors to create rich and memorable Deaf characters, like Will and Ebony, so that Deaf readers can see their stories within that of the surrounding world, and so that hearing readers can meet Deaf characters who embrace difference and experience it is as identity.
References
Berk, J. (2010). The dark days of Hamburger Halpin. New York: Knopf Books for Young Readers.
Power, M.R., Power, D., and Horstmanshof, L. (2007). Deaf people communicating via SMS, TTY, relay service, fax, and computers in Australia. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 12 (1), 80 – 92.
Woodson, J. (2007). Feathers. New York: G.P. Putnam Sons Books for Young Readers.
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- Themes: Jeanne Henry, Keriann Boorum
- Descriptors: Books & Resources, WOW Currents