I haven't read Louise Stern, but I'm so glad to see more and more Deaf writers writing fiction about Deaf characters, and I like this interview a lot. As she points out, speech alone is not sufficient for a deaf person. Indeed, when I was growing up, I would routinely turn on TV and see, for instance, clips of David Letterman making fun of an immigrant character for talking funny. I will not say that I actively thought "nobody can make fun of me for writing funny," but it was clear that writing was already a good voice for me. I had long conversations with a neighbor who never learned sign, exclusively through writing. I routinely went around, having to communicate in a pinch to hearing people. In my usual rounds-- buying minor things like soda, things like that, I used to answer a lot of rather naive questions from adults about deaf people. Did I go to school? etc.
One particularly strange example was from a convenience store clerk: "can you read?" written down for me to read. I was around ten years old. I was half amused, half bewildered.
I wrote back, "No but I can write!" Unfortunately, the joke fell flat as the clerk stared at the paper in confusion. (There went my career as a write-down comedian, before it even began.) But I've never thought I couldn't write. Maybe not novels. Maybe not things people would find interesting. Maybe not even things that should be published. But writing has always been a tool for me to communicate with others, and I get so angry, like Louise Stern does, about those who have been deprived of even sign language and have no language in which they can use as a base to learn how to read.
How can they, then, get connected to other people's thoughts, experiences, learn to know a person outside that very moment of interaction? Language is precious; sign language especially so because it's a major lifeline to open and equal communication.