Friday, July 19, 2024

True Biz by Sara Nović

One of the prompts for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge this year was to read a book by a deaf or hard-of-hearing author. I chose True Biz by Sara Nović as my entry for this prompt and I was immediately blown away.


Charlie is a teenage girl who was born deaf, but had a cochlear implant that didn't help much. She struggled in a traditional high school setting before she transferred to the River Valley School for the Deaf. The headmistress of the school, February, realizes that Charlie has basically been language-less for her entire life because she couldn't really hear English and she never learned ASL until arriving at River Valley. Meanwhile, Charlie starts dating Austin, the son from a legacy Deaf family. 

I mean, this book had its typical YA tropes - absent parents, kids getting drunk and smoking, kids just wandering around and not coming home at night - that really irritate me. BUT. I learned so much about Deaf culture and ASL as a language. There were mini-history lessons in the book so we could see the sorts of things Charlie was learning at school, and those history lessons covered how Alexander Graham Bell was an early opponent of ASL and about a student rebellion at Gallaudet University over hiring a hearing president. 

I learned about the differences between BASL, spoken mostly by black people, and ASL. I learned about how dangerous it is to be deaf in these modern times. I learned about the threat to Deaf education. I learned about the danger of cochlear implants and why they are controversial in the Deaf community.  I learned so much and it was done gracefully. If, like me, you know very little about Deaf culture, this is a great place to start. 

4/5 stars - It is a YA book, after all.

Lines of note:
Mel arrived with coffee and two bags of hot Cheetos, their preferred snack for stress eating. (page 224)
What's your stress snack?

...Charlie liked sex. And why shouldn't she? She strong-armed her body into countless unpleasant tasks each week: waking up when the morning was still blue, listening and lip-reading, circuit training in gym class, flossing. Shouldn't she be allowed to do something fun without being hamstrung by heirloom shame? (page 248)
Ugh. I'm such a prude. I want to scream at teens having sex. I mean, I know they do it. But! Why shouldn't she? Pregnancy, STIs, and heartbreak all come to mind. I want to be all sex-positive like the cool people, but I am an old fuddy duddy.

Hearing people turned aggressive so quickly, at even a momentary failure to respond, so sometimes Austin gave them the kind of answer they wanted, albeit loud and slurred. "Deaf" was a mercifully easy word to say, and he pointed to his ear and said it now. The driver reddened, handed Austin back the five, and motioned for him and Charlie to sit.

It was hard to imagine what the world might be like if deaf people had as short a fuse about hearing people's inability to sign, their neglect or refusal to caption TV, or, hell, the announcements on this bus. (page 288)
This was a powerful passage, I thought.

Hat mentions:
Charlie hung her grandmother's coat - a burgundy fur she really hoped was fake - on the hat rack and followed her in. (page 215)

Out on the street, Slash unzipped his backpack, pulled out a fistful of wooly hats, put one on his own head...
He pulled the fold of his hat down over his face to reveal a full ski mask. Charlie unrolled the hat in her hands... (page 231)

...scrolled through the Instagram deluge of his classmates' pets coerced into wearing Santa hats. (page 273)

She found him beside the ghost light, fussing with the feather in his hat. (page 318)

Nice hat, her father said, motioning to the headlamp. (page 319)

22 comments:

  1. How did you find a deaf or hard of hearing author? Did you just google it? I've never thought of it, honestly.

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    1. Yes, I just Googled and used the Goodreads lists for the Pop Sugar Challenge. There are lots of great options out there, but I'm glad I went with this one.

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  2. This sounds really interesting. Definitely a topic I don't know much about. I did hear a podcast about a guy who was blind, and then got meningitis which caused him to go deaf (what kind of luck is that???) So he had a cochlear implant, which I think in his situation was a good choice. But it does sound weird- you're not hearing people's actual voices, but a siri-like translation. I can see how it WOULDN'T necessarily be a good option for someone born deaf. This book sounds good!

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    1. Oh, boy, Jenny, I recommend you read this! Cochlear implants are super controversial, particularly among children. If you don't want to read this book, there's a synopsis of the controversy starting on page 6 of this: https://digscholarship.unco.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1213&context=urj. It's really an interesting question.

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  3. I've read this and agree, it's excellent! (Although I think it's adult, not YA). Her other book "Girl at War" is also really, really good.

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    1. Interesting. We spend so much time on Charlie's point of view and worrying about teenagers and their crushes that I definitely place it in the world of YA. And I think it would be great for young people to read about it and learn about the Deaf community!

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  4. I'm going to read this! Thanks for the rec.

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    1. Honestly, the only other books I have read that really delve into deafness were a series of romance novels called The Reed Brothers by Tammy Falkner and I feel like I sort new some of the Deaf culture material from those books, but this one centers it. I'm so glad I read it!

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  5. This book sounds (sounds?) interesting to me. I don’t know much about the deaf community and I’d like to know more. Thanks for the recommendation!

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    1. It's a great intro for people who don't know much about the issues in the Deaf community. I feel like it's a good primer.

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  6. I can't remember how I found this book but I really liked it too! I Actually listened to it on audio, which seems weird, but when they would sign in the book they put the sound of people signing over the narration and it worked really well. Thanks for the reminder!

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    1. The sound of people signing? How did they do that? So interesting!

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  7. Thanks for putting this on my radar, I think I could use some education about the deaf community.

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    1. I'm so glad other people are going to read it. I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time, I think.

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  8. This book has been on my TBR for a while now - I should move it up the list.
    Also - yeah, I feel awkward about teenagers having sex in YA books too. I always wonder if I should police my 12 year old's reading more for this kind of content because there is waaaaay more sex in YA books now than when I was growing up and I don't want her to think that kids are always having sex, even if they really are. But I guess she reads my romance novels so it's not like she doesn't know that this is what people do...

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    1. Yeah, I guess I read romance novels when I was a tween/teen, but here's the thing. In adult romance novels, it's ADULTS having sex, not teens. I just feel really gross when, as an adult, I'm reading books and suddenly teens are having sex. I know that they do and I know that it's good for them to read about things like that, but it's not for me.

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  9. This sounds like a really interesting book. I worked at Burger King in high school and the owner's son was deaf and I interacted with him a lot. I took a sign language class in college and I've always thought that colleges should allow ASL to count as a foreign language credit (maybe some do now, haven't thought about it in a long time), because maybe more people would learn how to communicate with deaf and hard of hearing people. I'm with you 100% on the reasons teens should not be having sex. I think it's a slippery slope because teens so often attach their self esteem to being sexually active. I join you in the fuddy duddy category.

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    1. Fuddy duddies unite!! I feel like a terrible feminist when I get on my soapbox about this. Don't get me started on my feelings about pornography because I end up sounding just like Phyllis Schlafly and hate myself a tiny bit.

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  10. The only books I've read that really gave me a window into the Deaf community and culture are Train Go Sorry by Leah Hager Cohen (non-fic, she's not deaf but was raised at a school for the deaf where her parents worked and was an interpreter) and A Maiden's Grave by Jeffery Deaver (passable mystery novel but a lot of really interesting stuff about Deaf people, the culture and hierarchy) - neither of these are actually by deaf people so I should probably remedy that.

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    1. It honestly isn't a culture I've thought about very much, despite having a relatively close friend in grad school who was a child of deaf adults. I should probably asked her for a reading list at the time, but it just didn't occur to me.

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  11. I really liked this book, too! The plot was a little meh for me, but all of the information about the Deaf community and the controversy surrounding cochlear implants was fascinating. I learned so much!

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    1. YES!! This is a perfect summation of how I felt in three sentences. The plot and characters weren't super, but it was so interesting!!

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