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)