Lilah feels stuck between two communities that she never feels fully apart of.
Give Me A Sign is a young adult debut novel by deaf author Anna Sortino.
Lilah was born with hearing loss, listening to the world the best she can through hearing aids and shrugging off accommodations at school and with her friends.
After her best friends share their summer plans of jobs and internships, Lilah decides to reach out to her old summer camp for deaf and blind children to be a counselor. She hopes to find her place within the community of counselors and children at the camp.
Lilah has never felt 'deaf' enough, with her parents pushing her and her brother to use hearing aids and not having learned ASL as a kid, at least outside of camp.
When she gets to the camp, she finds herself surrounded by different people who have all taken to their deafness differently. Two hearing British lifeguards, a hearing Youtuber who is going to school to be an interpreter, and other deaf teens who chose between signing and speaking. Then there are the kids she finds herself in charge of, some who sign, and some like her who struggle to find their community at the camp.
After struggling with ASL, Lilah starts to find her pace at the camp, with the help of the other counselors and specifically the dreamy Isaac. Isaac offers to teach her sign during their Friday night shift duty, and Lilah starts to feel more like she belongs with the others at the camp.
Throughout the summer, Lilah learns that having accommodations, or feeling like she isn't like everyone else, might not be the worst thing ever and starts to figure out that she might belong more in the deaf community than she first thought.
First of all, I am not deaf, I also know very little ASL. That being said, I absolutely loved this book. The way it handled both sign language and speaking, how it had a cast of characters with different abilities and needs, and the journey Lilah goes through during the story. The journey of figuring out what community she is apart of and accepting help that should have always been available to her is something I really enjoyed reading. There was also a lot to learn from this book, about how the hearing community views the deaf community and how we can help without being overbearing or annoying.
Overall, I think this book is a really good way of seeing how communities can use the help of those not within it and how even if you think you aren't disabled enough, you still belong with the people behind you.
A 5/5 star read for me!
This book is available now!
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