But You Look So Normal

When four-year-old Claudia Marseille was diagnosed with severe hearing loss and received her first hearing aid, her lifelong journey to fit in began. Here, she reveals how she overcame loneliness and isolation and carved out a fulfilling life for herself somewhere between the mainstream culture and the Deaf world.

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2024 IPPY Book Awards Gold Winner in Best First Book (Nonfiction/Personal)

“A fascinating, beautifully written memoir about a woman determined to carve out a fulfilling life for herself.” —Library Journal, starred review

By age four, Claudia Marseille had hardly uttered a word. When her parents finally had her hearing tested and learned she had a severe hearing loss, they chose to mainstream her, hoping this would offer her the most “normal” childhood possible. With the help of a primitive hearing aid, Claudia worked hard to learn to hear, lipread, and speak even as she tried to hide her disability in order to fit in. As a result, she was often misunderstood, lonely, and isolated—fitting into neither the hearing world nor the Deaf culture.

This memoir explores Claudia’s relationships with her German refugee parents—a disturbed, psychoanalyst father obsessed over various harebrained projects and moneymaking schemes and a Jewish mother who had survived the Holocaust in Munich—and with her own identity. Claudia shares how she emerged from loneliness and social isolation, explored her Jewish identity, struggled to find a career compatible with hearing loss, and eventually opened herself to a life of creativity and love.

But You Look So Normal is the inspiring story of a life affected but not defined by an invisible disability. It is a journey through family, loss, shame, identity, love, and healing as Claudia finally, joyfully, finds her place in the world.