Claudia Marseille
But You Look so Normal:  Lost and Found in a Hearing World
April 10, 2025
4 PM PDT | 5 PM MDT | 6 PM CDT | 7 PM EDT
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By age 4, I had not yet uttered a word. When my parents finally learned I had a severe hearing loss, they chose to mainstream me, hoping this would offer me the most “normal” childhood possible. With the help of a primitive hearing aid, and ten years of speech therapy, I worked hard to learn to hear, lipread, and speak even as I tried to hide my disability in order to fit in. As a result, I went through periodic episodes of loneliness—fitting into neither the hearing world nor Deaf culture.

My memoir also explores my relationships with my German refugee parents—a disturbed, psychoanalyst father and a Jewish mother, survivor of the Holocaust. I share how I dealt with loneliness and social isolation, the major changes in hearing technology that profoundly affected my life and how I opened myself to a life of creativity and love.

Because of my hearing loss, I gravitated towards the visual arts. I came to writing later in life, as I embarked on my memoir. Finally, I found the words to express my experiences living with a severe hearing loss.

I will share:

• How it is never too late to become a writer.
• What motivated me to write my memoir and my process.
• The pains and joys of examining my life for the memoir
• The irony of having struggled all my life to hear other people’s words to finally finding my own.
• How I dealt with the vulnerability of putting such a personal account out into the world.
• About the difficulty of finding the balance between expressing one’s truth and protecting family members.

Bio:  After earning master’s degrees in archaeology and in public policy, and finally an MFA, Claudia Marseille developed a career in photography and painting, a profession compatible with a severe hearing loss. She ran a fine art portrait photography studio for fifteen years before becoming a full-time painter. Since 2001 her paintings have been represented by the Seager Gray gallery in Mill Valley, CA. Claudia’s memoir, But You Look So Normal, published by She Writes Press, won the 2024 IPPY Gold Medal for Best First Book in Non-Fiction-Personal, and also a starred review from Library Journal.

She has played classical piano much of her life; in her free time she loves to read, watch movies, travel, spend time with friends, and attend concerts and art exhibits. She and her husband live in Oakland, CA. and have one grown daughter.

Website:  http://www.claudiamarseilleauthor.com