Life is spiraling out of control for 12-year-old Effie, the protagonist of Ann Clare LeZotte’s “Deer Run Home.”
In spare, first-person free verse, we glimpse Effie’s world, where social and emotional isolation is the norm. Though she is deaf and uses American Sign Language (ASL), no one in her family has learned to sign. At public school, engagement with peers and teachers is mediated through an ASL interpreter, Miss Kathy.
As a result, Effie suffers from language deprivation, a condition about which LeZotte provides information in the postscript. Language deprivation occurs when a person does not reach fluency in at least one language within the critical window for acquisition — approximately birth to age 5. While preventable, once it occurs its cognitive effects are pervasive and permanent. In the United States, less than 8 percent of hearing parents learn enough ASL to hold a two-way conversation with their deaf child, and an estimated 70 percent of deaf children experience a degree of language deprivation.
Things turn bleaker for Effie when the Covid-19 pandemic forces instruction online and her school declines to integrate ASL interpretation into its remote learning platform, leaving her to complete stacks of worksheets alone. Trapped at home where no one understands her, Effie is especially vulnerable to predation, and in a poem titled “That Summer, Dark Shadows” she recalls an instance of sexual assault by her stepfather. (Deaf children are two to three times more likely than hearing children to undergo sexual abuse.)
Effie and her sister, Deja, are sent away to live with their father, an alcoholic who fails to provide basic food and care for them. “My communication with Daddy/is him stomping/on the floor,/pointing to things,” Effie relates. “He gets annoyed if I sign./He doesn’t have/the patience to write,/unless it’s one or two/words — or a joke/without all the lines.”
At their father’s trailer, Effie fixates on the safety of the surrounding deer population, who are being forced from their habitats by new home construction. She takes special interest in a deer she nicknames “Golden Eyes,” who is often by himself. “Deer are supposed/to be herd animals./Why is he/all alone?” she wonders. In the deer’s predicament — loss of home, the world closing in — Effie sees her own.
A new school year begins, but Effie is repeating the fifth grade. For many language-deprived people, obtaining language fluency outside the critical window is exponentially harder, and diminished executive function and secondary learning disabilities are also common.
Effie is surprised to find comfort in a kind English teacher who encourages her to explore poetry despite her imperfect way of writing English: “like the words/go in sign.” In math, though, she is drowning, unable to translate word problems into numerical form.
Language deprivation isn’t inherent to deafness — deaf children given consistent access to a signed language from infancy can achieve age-expected language milestones alongside their hearing peers. Mary Lambert, the protagonist of LeZotte’s “Show Me a Sign” trilogy, set on Martha’s Vineyard in the 19th-century village of Chilmark (which had an unusually high incidence of deafness, and its own sign language shared by deaf and hearing residents alike), serves as an example of this. In Mary’s words, “the same journey can be more or less difficult depending on where you start.” Like Effie, Mary is deaf and has a penchant for writing, but unlike her, Mary has had lifelong language access in her family and community. She narrates her world with a complexity and wit that Effie’s voice intentionally lacks.
As Effie’s neglect by her family becomes increasingly evident, Miss Kathy files for emergency full-time custody, and a hearing ensues. As often happens when adults are seen through the eyes of children, Miss Kathy is a bit of an enigma. Questions about the often paternalistic field of special education, and the ethics of interpreters intervening in the lives of clients, remain uninterrogated.
LeZotte’s work has touched on these issues before. Mary Lambert pulls no punches in discussing the injustices of life on her island; calling out missionaries and educators on their saviorism is a theme of the trilogy’s third book, “Sail Me Away Home.”
In “Deer Run Home,” LeZotte employs a significantly softer touch. Effie’s friend Cait, a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy, expresses her displeasure with a condescending aide, but Miss Kathy’s bid to rescue Effie from her family is viewed as a wholly positive endeavor.
While this feels true to Effie’s wishful perspective, courtroom scenes might have afforded readers an opportunity to take in the bigger picture.
That Effie is hardly a firebrand in the face of her trauma is understandable, and perhaps essential in terms of what she might represent for today’s deaf children. Not to mention the fact that, as LeZotte’s author’s note reveals, Effie’s story is based on a real 1995 adoption case.
If Effie’s pain is real, so too might be her hope. The novel begins and ends with allusions to the myth of Iphigenia, King Agamemnon’s daughter, whom the goddess Artemis demanded he sacrifice to her in return for killing one of her favorite deer. The final poem reminds us that she “was rescued/in the end./The pyre/was built,/… the flames/rose. But/a stag/replaced her.” Through Effie, young readers both deaf and hearing will encounter a heartfelt homecoming story, and reassurance that they are not alone.
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