Writing off deafies

I can never be totally happy when I see deaf people pop up in literature. 

(The closest I've come lately is Jennifer Weiner's Certain Girls -- protag's daughter, Joy, has a hearing loss, but isn't part of the signing community.  For once, it colored the narrative, but it wasn't an afterthought, nor was it a totally mangled stereotype the author used to serve her own purposes.)

I always have to ask why. 

Why'd you make those people deaf? 

What right do you have to speak on behalf of us deafies? 

Why use deaf people in your book like chess pieces? 

What are they to you, other than receptacles for pity or fetishization that you fuck over so that your protagonists seem more human? 

And why does it seem that deaf characters are, 9 times out of 10, female?!

I was reading Fear and Yoga in New Jersey, by Debra Galant this week, when out of nowhere, I got slapped in the face with more of this deaf fetishization.  The protag, Nina, is a harried, married working yogini mom -- she escapes to the mall in the middle of one of those days where nothing is going right and everybody's an idiot but you. 

God, I could relate.  Yeah, I related so hard I think I had an erection... until she decided she needed a cookie and got pissed because a blonde, Stepford-ish mother and daughter were in front of her in line and I read this:

When the child and her mother got up to the counter, Nina watched carefully, prepared to find whatever they did contemptible.  The mother would be haughty.  The little girl would vacillate between three different cookies, and the mother would let everyone in line behind her wait.  Nina was already irritated at the little girl's greed and the mother's obsequiousness, and neither had opened their mouth.  And then something strange happened.  The mother looked down at her daughter and rapidly moved her fingers.  The girl repeated finger motions, smiled, then stepped up on her tiptoes and ordered two chocolate chip cookies.  The mother got out her wallet and paid.

American Sign Language, Nina realized.  The mother was deaf.  Nina blushed with shame as if every person had heard the running monologue in Nina's head.  What kind of monster was she?  Thinking ungenerous thoughts about a deaf woman and her sweet little girl.

Oh.  OHHHH!

And the realization slapped me in the face: I was supposed to read this as an indication of just how much Nina had lost sight of her fortune. 

Or how some people, because they're deaf or have deaf mommies, are completely blameless and should be immune from the bitches of the world.

And the sucky thing: if I weren't deaf, it would've worked.  But I am.  So Debra Galant can go suck my left one, thank you very much.

By using a deaf and CODA character just this once (never appeared again throughout the rest of the book -- the Stepford deafies were, apparently, that inconsequential), the author took advantage of the tired but true "poor deafies" trope -- for no purpose other than cheap literary effect.

Way to ruin a brain candy book.  Now I'll never know if I didn't like the book because I genuinely didn't like it, or because she pissed me off so early.

By the way, if you've really got an itch for reading an endearing little beach read about a dysfunctional poor-white-girl yogini, I recommend THIS instead of Fear and Yoga, thank you veddy much (and thanks again for that, J).

Comments

[Nabeel]

Ack. that story piece makes me cringe

[LARRY]

While I agree with you, I have to ask when is it okay for the author to use characters for "creative purposes"?
I've read books where authors have used characters (i.e., gay people, Latinos) where it was just stereotype galore.
I guess I'm asking is how much should we let our imagination run when we write? Or should we cut back?
Man, we just gotta get together cuz I feel like I'm just babbling.

[Rob]

Too funny! Oh, what I'd give to be a fly on your wall the very moment you finished reading that passage!

[Carrie]

And not to mention the fact the mother used her daughter to interpret for her. This is Debra Galant's concept of how deaf parents communicate with the world?