Ross Showalter writes: “As I adopted a ‘big-D’ Deaf identity (the uppercase D signifies a cultural identity, rather than a medical condition) and grew into a Deaf adult, I turned to literature written by Deaf writers to validate my existence. Most stories that included American Sign Language (ASL) seemed to only acknowledge ASL on the page as its English equivalent. The more I read this, the more it dissatisfied me. When I think about sign language, it is entirely on its own, as a language separate from English.”