Celebrate Deaf Awareness Month With These Memoirs

Bell’s graphic memoir reimagines her as a rabbit with a superhero alter ego. Young Cece worries about starting at a new school, especially since she has to wear a hearing aid strapped to her chest because she’s Deaf. At her old school, everyone was Deaf. But now, she’s the only Deaf kid in her class. To combat her anxiety, she imagines herself as the Deaf superhero, El Deafo, who can hear things far away with her incredible hearing aid. El Deafo helps Deaf kids feel seen and understood. Cece is so relatable as she finds her inner courage as she lives her life with her disability. El Deafo went on to win the Vermont Golden Dome Book Award, was a Newbery Medal Winner, and is now an animated series on Apple+.

Haben Girma is a DeafBlind disability advocate who’s traveled the world, graduated from Harvard Law School, and met President Obama. She grew up visiting her family in Eritrea, learning about how her grandparents fought for their freedom from Ethiopia. She always wanted to embody her family’s courage, so she decided to bravely face the world. She didn’t accomplish these things by overcoming her disability. Instead, she embraced it, inventing new accommodation technology and advocating for better disability inclusion.

Raymond Antrobus grew up as a biracial kid in East London. When he was six, doctors realized he was deaf. Antrobus couldn’t hear everyday sounds like whistling kettles, alarms, and some people’s voices. When he went to school, he hated having to wear his hearing aids. The Quiet Ear is a portrait of a deaf poet coming into his own. While the memoir is slim, Antrobus’s words create a deep impression of a young man coming of age and his acceptance of his own identities through his love of language.