How Do I Feel Performing in front of the "Hearing Community"?

Performing for the “hearing community” is an honor and at the same a huge responsibility. When I am in the middle of the stage, I feel it’s not just me, Trix Bruce, showing off my talents. I feel it is also me, the deaf person representing the thousands of deaf persons in America, showing the “hearing community” that I can do something, that I have the talent to “woo” them – to “entice” them with the language of the hands.

I strongly believe it is important to “educate” and “inform” the hearing world about the Deaf, about Deafness and about Deaf Culture.

My personal experiences throughout the years living in and interacting with the hearing world were met with a lot of challenges. I was a deaf person trying to “make” the hearing person deaf. At the same time, the hearing person tried to “make” me, a deaf person, hearing. This only showed that we, both the deaf and hearing, need to learn from each other in terms of language, culture, and interaction. My poems are especially geared towards the “hearing” community as a cry – a plea – to accept us, the deaf population, just like ordinary human beings. My poems tell the “hearing” person to treat us like a next door neighbor because we, as deaf people, are just like a next door neighbor; we just can’t hear.

I am just like everyone else who has a dream. I dream to be an actress - a DEAF actress in the hearing world. I want to show the world that I can be as good as anyone else, given the right opportunity.