"ASL is the language of my soul, and it's in great need of justice," says Ella Mae Lentz, preeminent advocate for ASL and the concept of Deafhood.

Before a watershed moment in a drama class at Gallaudet University, Lentz thought that ASL was not a "real" language, assuming that it was some watered-down version of English.

It would be a class called Sign Language Translation for the Theatre by Gilbert Eastman that would change her worldview, and ultimately reveal what she calls, "the small, hidden flame of passion, deep inside me that burst into a wildfire."

An accomplished Poet, this newfound passion for ASL would lead Lentz initially to study the linguistic aspects of poetry, discovering how she could apply this to ASL to create possibilities for ASL poetry.

In a video collection of poems titled, The Treasure: poems by Ella Mae Lentz, Lentz covers a substantial time period, starting with some of her early poems, written in English and translated into ASL, to later work composed entirely in ASL. This time continuum in some ways parallels Lentz's own journey into ASL activism. "My education really began in English. However, the more I dove into ASL, the more I realized that people had two worldviews; one focused on loss, and that someone without hearing had a stigma because of this loss. The other focused on Deafhood, an identity that recognizes and celebrates the inherent value of a Deaf person and respect for ASL, the language that came from the Deaf community." Lentz would go on to help found the Deafhood Foundation with the same focus on emphasizing the importance of Deafhood. "We've not reached equality yet, and we need to get there quickly," says Lentz. "The right to Deafhood is inalienable for every Deaf child, woman and man. It's the sum of all positive meanings of 'Deaf', past, present and future; all the largest meanings of what Deaf people have been, are, and can be. This requires dreaming bigger and building a vision that is Deaf-centered and positive for future Deaf generations." "