Living a Half Life

The DEAFinitely Readers Book Club January book was a dystopian novel about a partially deaf girl who is trying to find her place in an unforgiving environment. With the book club, we discuss chapters each week and have truly dissected this story. My real-time reactions can be found on YouTube HERE and in-depth information about the chapters are on the DEAFinitely Readers Discord server.

I have so many quotes that really resonated with me throughout this book and want to share all of them, but I'll pick my top quotes.

The story is haunting. The imagery is CHAMP.

And the correlations it implied between past and present of in the book to current events in reality, makes me want to shove the book in everyone's face like Thea was trying to do and say LISTEN. You have to LISTEN.

Listen. It was the thing that was the hardest for hearing people to do.

Dust by Alison Stine

"History was a dangerous subject. History could cause me to ask my parents questions. Questions like: If the weather was hotter and storms more severe, what was causing the change?"

The story follows Amalthea, or Thea, a sixteen year old girl who is deaf in one ear. She has been taught from a young age to hide her differences, to accommodate and adjust herself - even changing her name - to make sure that no one knows that she can't hear. Her family moves from Ohio to Colorado, escaping the flood to go to a drought. They have dust storms that are causing Thea anxiety because she knows it's not normal. She continuously is trying to break her father's rigid control and figure out who she is and what she can do in the world.

At the start of the book, Thea has been allowed to work at a café to bring in some money. There, she is introduced to the town, library, and Ray - a deaf boy who teaches her sign language. She realizes how much she is missing - not just communication and access but an entire community. Throughout the book, she battles to learn more and to help the town against her parents wishes.

"I needed Louisa to know for some reason. I needed her to understand: I did not have what Ray seemed to. I did not have another language. I did not have family, a mom, a great-uncle, she had said - who understood me, who tried. lost. I was lost. I don't know sign language."

Deaf Representation

It is obvious from the very beginning that this book would contain Deaf characters. It is important to note that the author herself (Alison Stine) has said she is half-deaf (one ear) like Thea and has struggled to find her place in this world - neither deaf nor hearing. I really connected with her note, as I have struggled myself to truly figure out where I belong in the Deaf community.

"Had I lived it? What culture? I felt like I was living a half life. Not fully hearing, not fully deaf."

Thea's mentions of her parents turning their back while talking to her (conversation over), to mumbling and note repeating themselves, to not listening when she talks but getting angry when she "doesn't listen", feeling people waiting on you to respond, when you didn't hear them at all and just stay silent ... all of these little snippets that Alison Stine incorporated into the book are experiences that I, myself, have had.

When she finds out about sign language, you can feel her excitement and disbelief at there being a way to have access to communication that she could fully understand.

"Why do you sign, if you can hear?" (Thea) "I don't hear everything. My friends don't. Being deaf isn't just like one kind of experience, and no one thing is going to work for everybody all the time." (Ray)

Hearing People Can Do

One thing I felt as the book continued is the constant dwelling on what the hearing could do.

"The easy ways of hearing, and how they could just know, hear enough to anticipate and guess. Enough not to feel left out. Every conversation included them, even the ones that didn't. They were spies, hearing people, lurking around corners, always figuring things out."

Towards the end of the book, it felt like a constant note or remind that at least the hearing could do it, or that the hearing don't listen. I'm not disagreeing with those parts of the book as they are true experiences, however, I felt that Thea - and consequently - the book focused too much on the differences between the hearing and the deaf. Instead of focusing on what Thea noticed with the dust and the wind and seeing minute differences that could come from being partially deaf, it focuses on what she is missing in the hearing world or how much harder she has it than everyone else.

"I thought about my words. I always had to think before I spoke, had to make sure I had heard correctly before responding - and I knew my parents didn't often do this. They just talked; they didn't think. They didn't have to prepare like I did. They controlled the conversation, always."

In reality, where they were living, everyone has a hard experience. Towards the end, you did see a shift in her realization that what she could do and to take pride in her deafness so I liked that growth of her character.

Climate and Social Change

The other aspect of the book is about climate change. Within the story, you have a mention of a pandemic that led to a flood and now they are in a drought with dust storms. But not only that, the parents had changed from allowing their children to be children at school to only farm work and unschooling - from jeans to dresses, from emails to no contact.

"What I could do was slowly taken away...It was slow at first, so slow I might not have even noticed, day to day, how the restriction built."

The way the author wrote the father - you are made to hate the character. Sadly enough, I feel like this character is relatable in the world - there are people who are exactly like the father... and that is scary.

"As girls, we have been taught to do that, trained to make ourselves quiet and small. To make ourselves no one at all."

He continued to say he was doing everything to protect her and their family.

"I've already been hurt, I don't know why my dad's so focused on protecting me when he won't even acknowledge what I am. Hard-of-hearing. Deaf. It's not something to be ashamed of. He doesn't have to make it better. I'm not something to be made better."

Final Thoughts

The imagery Alison Stine evoked is absolutely CHAMP. As a reader, you truly felt like you were immersed in her story. One could almost feel the dust getting into every line of skin, of staying with you, and feeling the muggy sunny day - and the need for water.

"Any place made a mark on you, maybe imperceptibly until you were gone, on to your next move. Only then could you see what you had left, and what it had left on you."

The one thing that made me decide on a lower rating is how the book ended. The story felt rushed towards the end - as if she could only write 25 chapters. You reached the climax of the book and within one chapter, the book ends with a neatly wrapped up "happily ever after". The dad even apologized and Thea and Amelia were able to integrate into the community. He went from doing everything himself to accepting help... and everything was all "a-okay" within a span of ten pages.

It made me feel like it was too tidy especially because in the real world, nothing happens that quickly and there is always a process. Honestly, I would've preferred to have less of the backstory and chapters about the dad and when he changed, why he changed, etc. and more of what happens after the storm - the process of the "happily ever after." And throughout the book, you truly felt as if you were in the real world - albeit a dystopian world.

Overall, the deaf representation was wonderful, if a little sermonic, and the story was an enjoyable read. I do recommend it and it has gone my book list. And it's important to remember: