Title: El Deafo
Author: Cece Bell
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 242
Rating: 3/5
I was excited to get to this graphic novel because I’d heard a lot of good things about it, but honestly I was a little disappointed. I liked the art style and I’m all for books like this which promote diversity and encourage you to think a little differently, but the main character was insanely irritating all of the way through. I know she was deaf, but that doesn’t mean I had to like her.
The main problem was with her lack of assertiveness. Pretty much every negative situation that she got into could have been fixed if she’d just spoken up and said something. She started thinking that people were doing things to spite her when they quite clearly just didn’t know that they were upsetting her. And then she’d be mad at them, and as a reader I’m there like, “If you don’t tell them that them putting a film on upsets you, how are they supposed to know?”
I can see why people would like this , don’t get me wrong. I just found it hard to sympathise with the protagonist because of how derpy and uncommunicative she was. Maybe that was brought on by the hearing loss somehow because I can buy that a disability might make you quieter and more withdrawn. But it’s no excuse to be a dick.