Deafness and the myth of normality

Am feeling particularly sick and stupid today, but before I forget two interesting ideas which came up in the second half of "Inside Deaf Culture":

Sign language poetry which uses the physical forms of the signs, and adds extra meaning through extra non-sign movements, like their position in physical space and the movement of eyes and head etc. Like those chinese/japanese etc poems which use the sub-symbols of the ideograms to make complex inter-references, I think that sounds really cool and am a little sad that as someone who doesn't speak/read the language (or any other non-alphabetic language) I can't truly appreciate them. But I guess they're not for me.

Also an idea I've encountered before but am still getting my head around: that being deaf is not being a "failed normal person", but a (hopefully successful) Deaf person.
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