For most of her 73 years, Oakland’s Claudia Marseille has lived in energetic response to a comment made by a high school English teacher and often by people who learn of her profound hearing disability. Related Articles “But you look so normal,” they say, causing Marseille to wonder what a person with severe hearing loss looks like, what “normal” looks like and if that’s what she must be to find her place in the hearing world. The comment titles her new memoir, “But You Look So Normal: Lost and Found in a Hearing World,” which Marseille will read from and discuss in a book launch party June 1 at the Piedmont Center for the Arts and on June 26 at the Rockridge Library in North Oakland ( ).
Marseille grew up largely In Berkeley after moving at age 5 with her German parents from San Francisco to a home near Hillside Elementary School. Her father was a psychoanalyst who struggled with severe mental health issues; her mother was Jewish and had survived the Holocaust. Together, they had immigrated after World War II, bringing with them Marseille’s grandmother, Omama, at one time a successful actress.
Marseille’s childhood home was shrouded by secret-keeping and shadowed with hidden realities, among them the family’s complete history in Germany, the trauma caused by her father’s illness and Marseille’s inability to hear. The force of trying to appear “normal” had her mother and father in denial or at best unaware that their daughter’s lack of language.