Maya Lopez: Experience Of Deafness And Sign Language

1. I believe the theme and topic of this work is to tell a story about a young girl named Maya Lopez and describes her struggles and understanding of the world. Maya is a dancer, a performance artist, and actress and a boxer. She has the ability of being able to mimic any action or movement she sees, perfectly. This talent was first discovered at primary school when she played a complicated piece of music after seeing a musician perform it once although she is deaf. However, this book provides more detail about her background, her relationship with her father, her Native American community, experience of deafness and Sign Language, and her experiences growing up. Realizing that she is deaf she describes herself as an echo. I do believe the novel does make the reader think about themselves, even if we are not deaf like Maya. It makes the reader understand Maya’s feelings and how she views the world, and just like myself, I compared it to how I am able to view the world and understand that it wasn’t easy for her. She even describes the world as “a foreign movie without the subtitles.”

2.
Maya definitely represents the texts theme the most because the entire novel is her story. It’s her experiences and her thoughts. She tells about how she grew up and also narrates the story by telling the reader what has changed since she was little, or how differently she use to think in the past. Her father can also represent the theme because he is Maya’s favorite person and someone she looks up to the most. He influences her and helps her learn despite her disability. He was always there for her and showed her his love, which also makes his death later in the story so much harder for her and makes her get revenge. Maya is true to herself so the relationship with the theme does remain constant over the course of the
story.

3. Since she can replicate any action she sees, including an individual's fighting style. She once nearly took down Daredevil, believing him to be the one who killed her father. After learning that it was actually Wilson Fisk, her legal guardian, who was responsible, she shot him and left New York in an attempt to discover herself. Maya goes on a Native American vision quest to pick up the pieces of her shattered life. This action in the story puts together the theme. It shows her staying strong and trying to find herself and comfort in her father’s death, since he was the one she looked up to most.
4. David Mack used different ways and styles of text to tell this story. Sometimes he would use strips and go from left to right, (tier) or he would build character onto his paintings by simply adding a border to certain panels, or moving the panels to go from the top and down to the bottom of the page. Also he used a lot of thought bubbles to show what Maya as a child thought or said and have captions next to them with Maya narrating or clarifying her understanding of her as a child. Also Mack used a lot of focus panels to catch the reader’s eye, such as Maya’s eye, or pictures of her father. The layout isn't a traditional 6 or so panels to a page, with the action flowing to and from each distinct panel. Instead, the background tells as much story as the panels, and the panels may be portrayed as picture frames, childhood sketches, collages, a collection of mouths or other symbols.