The Silence Between Us

Maya is proud of her identity as a Deaf person, and she would not exchange it for the ability to hear. Throughout the text, the use of the capital “D” in the word “Deaf” when it applies to Maya indicates that she sees her Deafness as a central part of her identity. When asked to give a history presentation, she chooses to focus on a moment when Deaf people stood up for their autonomy and self-determination as a group, and when Jackson rudely demands to know why this should matter to those who are not Deaf, she makes an impassioned argument that the rights of the Deaf should be seen as part of a larger movement toward social equality for everyone. She calls this her “Deaf pride” speech (147). When her doctor suggests the possibility of cochlear implants, Maya responds that she likes being Deaf. To her, getting cochlear implants would mean rejecting and erasing a core part of her identity. When she realizes that the teens in the cochlear implant group have rejected Deaf identity, she feels “a physical ache” at the idea (155).

As important as Deafness is to shaping Maya’s identity, she is still a young person in the process of coming to a more nuanced understanding of the world.