Give Me a Sign
By: Anna Sortino
Expected Publication: July 11, 2023
320 pages
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Source: Publisher via NetGalley (Thank you!!)
*Note: The above link to Amazon is an affiliate link. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.
Goodreads description--A girl finds a community—and love—over the course of one summer in this joyful, wholesome YA romance that celebrates Deaf pride. Think CODA meets Jenny Han!Lilah is stuck in the middle. At least, that’s what having a hearing loss seems like sometimes—when you don’t feel “deaf enough” to identify as Deaf or hearing enough to meet the world’s expectations. But this summer, Lilah is ready for a change.
When Lilah becomes a counselor at a summer camp for the deaf and blind, her plan is to brush up on her ASL. Once there, she also finds a community. There are cute British lifeguards who break hearts but not rules, a YouTuber who’s just a bit desperate for clout, the campers Lilah’s responsible for (and overwhelmed by)—and then there’s Isaac, the dreamy Deaf counselor who volunteers to help Lilah with her signing.
Romance was never on the agenda, and Lilah’s not positive Isaac likes her that way. But all signs seem to point to love. Unless she’s reading them wrong? One thing’s for Lilah wanted change, and things here . . . they're certainly different than what she’s used to.
I have always loved the idea of sign language. The ability to talk with one's hands and body is intriguing. But I never had a reason to learn beyond the alphabet. However, a friend of mine had a daughter born deaf, and that brings the community just one step closer. I also have a friend from high school who became a sign language interpreter. I have no idea what led him to this career path, but I have gone to him more than once with questions for my other friend—all that to say why I was interested in this book.
Obviously, I've never been deaf or hard of hearing. I don't know anyone who is personally besides my friend's daughter. So I can't speak to the experiences that anyone else might have had. And I want to be careful in the wording of what I'm trying to say. One thing I have learned is that emotions happen to us. We don't choose which emotions we feel. Emotions are triggered by thoughts that we have though, and we do have control over our thoughts. We can choose to let a thought linger in our minds. We can expand upon it, dwell upon it. And we can even decide that a specific idea doesn't suit us or fit with our values and decide to change our thoughts. Changing our thoughts can trigger different emotions. Sometimes we can think very similar thoughts, but a perspective change allows us to feel differently. This is called "metacognition" which basically means thinking about our thinking. I say all of that to say that I didn't always agree with Lilah's thoughts and thus her feelings.
1) Lilah assigns motivation to hearing people who use ASL when she can't possibly know someone's heart. I know sometimes people's motives are quite clear even if not expressly stated. But she struggles with Mackenzie's character so much, which I'll discuss more later. But she says, "I don't want people to assume my less-than-perfect signing skills means I'm just another hearing person trying to use ASL for clout." And another character, Natasha, says (but Lilah agrees), "It's not fair she gets this many followers when Deaf creators have to work so hard." And then later Natasha says, "Lessons should come from within the Deaf community in order to be accurate and properly reflect Deaf culture, not from hearing people..."
You can't know someone's motivations for wanting to learn ASL any more than their motivation to learn any other language. Obviously, Mackenzie was in the wrong to portray herself as an expert or a teacher when she is very much a student. But what would be wrong about Mackenzie using her YouTube channel to teach once she becomes fluent in the language? We wouldn't require all teachers of Spanish to be native Spanish speakers, or further, native Spaniards. Someone doesn't have to be born into a culture to be an expert on it or to teach it. We have professors that teach about ancient historical societies, but we don't fault them for this because they didn't live in the right location or period of time. We can even liken this to Eminem infiltrating the rap game back in the early 2000s. He took on a culture that many would say wasn't his to infiltrate. Some people call this cultural appropriation, but I don't view it that way. So the idea that interpreters or teachers need to be deaf seems preposterous to me. And also, shouldn't we want as many people as are interested to learn sign language? No matter what the reason for wanting to do so? And where do all of the hearing parents who love their children with all their hearts fit into this? Not to mention the siblings who might be hearing and grow up learning ASL right alongside their deaf/hard-of-hearing sibling. I know my friend's son has interpreted for his sister among kids who are hearing because he's learning almost as quickly as she is. Obviously, there is a difference between learning for exploitation and learning for a desire to communicate. I only zero in on this because the only hearing person in this book that uses ASL without being on the hearing loss spectrum is Mackenzie who is looked down upon throughout the entire book.
2) Having never been in the shoes of a deaf/HOH person, I can't tell anyone who is what their experience is or should be. Similar to point number one, people who misunderstand your diagnosis are not necessarily malicious, intending to put down, or to offend. The entire conversion around 44% is, I'm 100% sure, an indication of perhaps frequent interactions with "hearies", as hearing people are called more than once in this book. Obviously, Bill and his wife were morons. But I don't think they were malicious morons. And Lilah is even annoyed that they don't seem to know the term "audiologist." I've harped on this before, but we can't be mad at the world for not knowing everything there is to know about our unique condition or medical diagnosis. Do you know how many "weird" diagnoses there are in the world? Even common ones like Type 1 Diabetes have so many misconceptions, and the only people who understand the disease are those who live with it or are intimately acquainted with it or are doctors or nurses themselves. I have a rare uterine condition, but I'm not angry about people asking me about it or not understanding what it is or the effects that it has had upon me. And I don't think the majority of people I encounter are horrible people because they don't understand. They are simply uninformed.
Lilah specifically says about this conversation that "Bill doesn't realize he just said that he doesn't want his grandson to become someone like me." Insensitive? Sure. 100%. Malicious? No. I know plenty of people who wouldn't hope for their grandchildren to have a diagnosis of Down syndrome or autism. But once they have received those diagnoses, they've seen joys and blessings that only could have come from their grandchildren (or children) being exactly as they are. Does this mean that Bill is an evil, hate-filled person? Not at all. Uninformed? Yes. Does Bill need to change? Maybe. But Bill doesn't know what he doesn't know. Who carries the burden of this situation? The person who has the knowledge. Is that fair? Probably not. But what else are you going to do about it? You can't educate the entire population. Since you can't change the thoughts or knowledge that others have, you are responsible for your thoughts towards those people and how those thoughts cause specific emotions to rise within you. Change your thoughts, and thus change your emotions.
3) "It's not long ago that "deaf and dumb" was the actual label. The incorrect assumption that those who use a visual form of communication aren't as intelligent." Say what? Dumb comes from Old English and literally means "silent". The 19th century is when dumb began to take on any connotation towards lacking intelligence. The phrase "deaf and dumb" would literally conjure in my mind someone who can't hear or speak. And many deaf people choose not to speak. The assumption that the character is making here that people assume deaf people are lacking in intelligence may be true of individuals, but no way should this assumption be applied to the whole of hearing humanity.
I was sad over the conversation that Lilah had with her mother about Max's potential need for a cochlear implant. Max is eleven at the time and has been immersed in the hearing world and not given much exposure to the deaf community or culture. My friend who became an interpreter said you wouldn't believe the number of parents who make no effort to learn sign language. And this breaks my heart. For the kids and the parents. Obviously learning a new language isn't going to be easy, but isn't the ability to communicate with your child worth the effort? I know my friend is struggling to learn ASL as quickly as her daughter who now goes to a school for the deaf, but she's putting in the effort. Communicating with her daughter is a priority. And I don't know that faulting Max's parents for wanting him to have the implant is wrong either. Of course, Lilah's point was that Max shouldn't be consulted, and ultimately in the book he was.
4) "People like to watch me. One time someone took a video of me and my mom talking. When I go places, they watch like I'm an animal at the zoo." This is another example of assigning motivation. In this case, Isaac is the one "talking." I know it can't feel good to be stared at, but you don't know people's hearts most of the time. You can't know why they are staring or even videoing. We assume the worst about people. But the truth is that we just can't know what other people feel in their hearts or think in their heads. And if we can't know without them telling us, then it's better (for us and for them) to assign them pure and positive motivations rather than evil or negative ones.
I did love this quote: "Miscommunication is a fact of life. We just have to deal with it more often than most people."
I have had a lot to say about the portrayal of the character's attitudes in this book that I can't say that I liked or appreciated. The last thing I'll say about that is that even in the author's note at the end, the author talks about how she didn't see representation of characters like herself in the books she read growing up. I've touched on this before in this Discussions Only We Know post about diversity. Anna Sortino saw a gap in her reading experiences where there were no characters that represented her experiences. And she went out and wrote that book. I give her kudos for that. Instead of simply complaining about the lack, she stepped into the gap and provided what was missing. I will definitely be on the lookout for a future release because I enjoyed the actual story even when I struggled with the characters' mindset. (You can tell the mindset comes from the author instead of the main character because the same thought process seems to be shared by every other major character and not challenged by supporting characters at all.)
After I've dissected all of the character's perspectives that I took issue with, I do have to say that I actually enjoyed the story. I liked Lilah's seeking to find herself and where she fits in within the community and how she straddles the line between hearing and deaf. I liked Isaac and understood his hesitancy to get to know Lilah when she wasn't able to communicate with him as easily. But I loved that he worked with her to teach her more signs so that she could communicate with him and others easier. I loved that Lilah worked so hard at it. I loved the approach she took with Blake to get her to open up to the idea of signing and learning. I even liked the ending which isn't sad exactly but also isn't your typical happily ever after. Overall, I truly did enjoy Give Me a Sign.
Favorite quote:
-Sometimes there's purpose to being in the middle.
Give Me a Sign gets 3 Stars. The story was interesting enough to keep me reading and not wanting to put it down. But the perspective of the characters was a struggle for me and took my rating down. Have you read Give Me a Sign? What did you think? Let me know!
