Read My Lips

Following a bout of meningitis at the age of five, Cat becomes profoundly deaf. Believing she has her best interests at heart, her mother sends her away to a school the students have nicknamed ‘Deaf City’. It is not entirely clear where this story is set; the ‘dorms’, the teachers, the names of the characters make it feel American but at other points we seem to be in England – pounds get spent, not dollars. Central to the story is the rivalry between two groups within the school; those who use sign language and those who use speech and mouth reading. At school, Cat and her best friend are ‘signers’. When she falls for a ‘speaker’, the new boy Joey Estrada, things get very difficult.

This book is a real attempt to describe a complex, internal battle within the deaf community. But still, it might be hard for young readers to understand this little known conflict if they have never had to think about the many ways in which deaf people communicate with each other and with the outside world. In the story, Cat feels inferior and chooses to learn to speak, but it isn’t clear that this isn’t really a choice for those deafened from birth, or that sign is a complete language with its own grammar and syntax; the only possible form of communication for many deaf people. Novotny Hunter barely touches on the important fact that for many years sign language was banned in schools for the deaf, so that young people had to invent their own ways to sign.

She clearly knows her stuff; the preface tells us about her personal knowledge of these issues, and she credits a Californian school for the hearing impaired. Through Cat’s preparation for a school debate, the reader will learn a lot about how deaf people feel about themselves and the world. But I found it hard to believe that in a modern school for deaf children, teachers would ban girls like Cat from joining the Outsiders Club which organises trips to the fair (this is crucial to the story) because children who use only sign language would not be able to communicate. What happened to the idea of interpreters, used by all the sign language users I know?

Despite some misgivings, the descriptions of bullying and exclusion are well told. Cat comes across as a strong character and the message at the end of the story is moving, powerful and positive.