Sounds and Silence Made Visible: Cece Bell’s El Deafo (2014)

In Cece Bell’s El Deafo, a graphic memoir which won the Eisner Award for children aged 8–12, the drawings entertainingly illustrate and graphically recreate the author’s youth, and render in a unique way what it means to live with a hearing impairment. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the strategic place taken by sight in a tale of self-development which has the hybrid form of a graphic novel. Hybridity allows the author to engage realistically with the role of visual perception in the verbal exchanges of hearing-impaired subjects and with the part played by appearances in the construction of one’s self-image. As readers become skilled at interpreting the graphic codes which convey the quality and nature of the perceived verbal and non-verbal information, they become sensorially and emotionally involved in deconstructing clichés and in witnessing how the heroine negotiates her image. The scenes of awkward behaviour and embarrassing exposure draw our attention to the fact that subjects affected by this invisible disability are often marginalized or made hypervisible in the eyes of the hearing. In her daydreams, Cece recreates herself as the “supercrip” El Deafo, who can overcome obstacles with the help of her hearing aid, the Phonic Ear. In these alternative visions of herself, she triumphs against competing, idealized, ableist representations. Cece Bell’s pictures, which combine sensory data and articulate different levels of perception, play a crucial role in helping readers improve their “disability cultural competences” (Rosemarie Garland-Thomson).