Blair Fell

"Arlo Dilly is young, handsome and eager to meet the right girl. He also happens to be DeafBlind, a Jehovah's Witness, and under the strict guardianship of his controlling uncle. His chances of finding someone to love seem slim to none. And yet, it happened once before: many years ago, at a boarding school for the Deaf, Arlo met the love of his life-a mysterious girl with onyx eyes and beautifully expressive hands which told him the most amazing stories. But tragedy struck, and their love was lost forever. Or so Arlo thought. After years trying to heal his broken heart, Arlo is assigned a college writing assignment which unlocks buried memories of his past. Soon he wonders if the hearing people he was supposed to trust have been lying to him all along, and if his lost love might be found again. No longer willing to accept what others tell him, Arlo convinces a small band of misfit friends to set off on a journey to learn the truth. After all, who better to bring on this quest than his gay interpreter and wildly inappropriate Belgian best friend? Despite the many forces working against him, Arlo will stop at nothing to find the girl who got away and experience all of life's joyful possibilities"--

A Novel

The Sign for Home

Lindsay

English is just not your first language. American Sign Language is. Writing in a language that you’ve literally never heard is like battling monsters with your hands tied behind your back. No matter how much you try to butt them with your head, they keep knocking you down. The worst are the confusing Preposition Monsters and the giant Verb- Tense Rodents, sharp- toothed beasts who time and again… have eat you? Have eat- ed you? Has ate you? Have will eaten you?

Truly knowing the world is less about whether you can see and hear and more about the intensity of your curiosity and intelligence.

Sometimes words are like old sticky candy left in your pocket. They have so many things stuck to them, like old stories and lint, that they have a different taste from the one they are supposed to have.

This is why one should never say “hearing impaired”; it implies the Deaf need to be fixed and are somehow substandard.

The Sign for Home quotes

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