After a year of teaching deaf students, Arathy Manoharan realized that she needed to be able to apply the principles of bilingual deaf education in order to be able to do justice to her profession. For this reason, at the age of 23, she moved to the United States to pursue another master's degree in deaf education from McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. On this predominantly white campus, she served as a graduate assistant in the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs. When she graduated and joined the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD) as an English teacher, she was introduced to young adult literature with culturally diverse characters by a friend, who was trying to help her understand her students better. Young adult literature captures the interest of her students as they are able to relate to the characters in them. When they read about characters who look like them and talk like them and who stand up for what they believe in, students are able to more meaningfully explore social justice. Further, they are equipped to branch out into exploring other social issues through projects related to their reading.