Abstract
Cece Bell’s (El Deafo, Amulet, New York, 2014) is a middle childhood graphic novel memoir that explores the author’s experiences of losing her hearing and growing up with a severe hearing loss. As a graphic novel, the story is able to avoid a medicalized view of disability by combining image and text, a format that allows readers, those with hearing and those without, to step inside the narrative and deeply consider Bell’s experiences. The narrative elements typically found in graphic novel autobiography create a communal reading experience, which does not allow readers to forget who the book is about. After an analysis of the primacy of these narrative graphic novel elements in telling a story about a disability, this article shares the reading experiences of university students in exploring this story, during which students used both the image and text to help them confront misconceptions they had about deafness, broadening their understandings and experiences around disability.
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Dr. Sara Kersten is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. A former primary grade teacher, she is interested in multiliteracies, including how children read, experience, and respond to a wide variety of children’s literature including graphic novels, wordless picturebooks, and nonfiction. She is also interested in disability, particularly how Deaf/deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals are depicted in children’s literature.
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Kersten, S. “We are Just as Confused and Lost as She is”: The Primacy of the Graphic Novel Form in Exploring Conversations Around Deafness. Child Lit Educ 49, 282–301 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-017-9323-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-017-9323-9