[stylist] being overwhelmed?

[helene ryles]

My aim is to show deaf and deafblind people as being individuals with
a varity of differant personalities.
Zohara and Zahira live in an environment with a high number of deaf
people. So their deafness is simply not a barier. It's just a
characteristic since everyone where they live uses sign language.
Zohara is also blind so she needs tactile signing, but fortunately she
gets supported by a neigbour who is deafblind who uses signing. (born
blind. Deaf through old age). She teaches Zohara tactile sign language
and blind skills. She accepts her deafblindness.

Another Character Melissa (PC M Murrat) is fighting a battle in a none
disabled world to stay in a job which doesn't normally accept people
like her. She's high partial and also manages to hide her loss by
memoriesing the chart.  She's a deafblind uncle tom if you like.
Although she does have the advantage of being trilingual
(understanding two spoken languages and one sign language). All works
until she gets shot at, then she losses her residual vision and finds
it very hard to adapt.

Nadia is a CI user and high partial but she has other burdens so her
deafblindness is the least of her problem. She fails her mother by 1.
Being born female, 2. Being a squib (in case you don't know harry
potter lingo a sqib is a non magical person born to magical parents)
3. being deafblind. (in that order). Her problem is compounded. Not by
being deafblind but because her mother does not accept the way she is.
She is sent to an oral school and her mother tries to denied her sign
language.

If you just write about one deafblind person it's easy for the reader
to assume that all deafblind are like that too.   I want to show
variety.

I also want to show how a world puts up barriers to suit what is
considered normal. One way of illustrating it is in Darthrilia their
are no stairs. It's not unsual for an entrance to be situated on the
roof of a building which is well suited to a dragon but normal human
beings would have to struggle to climb a ladder to get to the
entrance. So normal huam beings would suddenly develop a disability:
an inabilty to fly.

The fact that the world is designed in an audio visual way is the main
hurdle for deafblind people.

I think the major problem of being deafblind is simply it's rarity,
and the rarity of a deafblind person landing in the right place to
recieve the right sort of training. If their was an environment where
these problems could be addressed as it is with Zohara their world
doesn't have to be a sad isolated one.

Hope this email makes sense and isn't too long. I'm just trying to
explain what I want to achieve in this novel.

Helene.

On 21/04/2009, LoriStay at aol.com <LoriStay at aol.com> wrote:
> Helene;   I'm wondering whether an editor might not feel a bit overwhelmed
> with so many deaf blind characters!   What are you focusing on in this
> story?
> Lori
> In a message dated 4/20/09 6:25:47 PM, dreamavdb at googlemail.com writes:
>
>
>> Thanks for the encouragement Tami. There is actually an entire family
>> of female deafblind characters in 'a deafblind girl'.  You even have a
>> deafblind cop. She has a distant cousin in the Darthrilian police
>> force who gives her a leg up.
>>
>> Helene
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
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