An excerpt from the self-interview "Who Are You?" by Tanis

Let me give you some information here. I am a deaf, adoptive, single, lesbian mother of a deaf child. But my deaf child is ten years old, adopted at age five, and she is black and born in Jamaica. This makes her a landed immigrant and a racial minority in my community. I am a nonblack lesbian mother raising a black (not sure of her sexual orientation yet) deaf daughter. I will wait till she is older before I ask her about her sexual orientation, but I am sure it won't be a problem anyway. So she is black and you aren't; she might be straight and you aren't. She is going to learn a lot about a male-dominated, white, and straight world when she grows up and I want to make her as comfortable as possible. This means she has been exposed to deaf, black, feminist, and lesbian communities up to this point. I have to add here that I have also been heavily involved in disability issues. So my daughter is exposed to not just deafness but different forms of disability. I use a crutch and a scooter when necessary.

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