Mother Tongue

Sara Nović's Mother Tongue is a book I want to press into everyone's hands - disabled or not. This meticulously researched exploration of d/Deaf culture and history dismantles everyday ableism with precision, tracing Nović's journey from isolation to disability activism. It's a book that refuses to let us look away from how we fail disabled people - and shows us how we can do better * Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias *
Sara Novic's Mother Tongue is an unruly, defiant, and breathtaking history of becoming. You could say it's about becoming deaf and becoming a parent, but it's also about how ordinary people dismantle oppression one word, one sign, one bold act of love at a time. I can't think of a more urgent book to read as a new parent * Greg Marshall, author of Leg *
Mother Tongue is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand the deaf world today. A stirring personal tale of coming of age as a deaf woman in America, woven through with a sweeping portrait of deaf history and culture, it resonates with an impassioned call to action, an appeal to decency and equality for people of all abilities and disabilities * Thomas Fuller, author of The Boys of Riverside *
Funny, intimate, honest, and deeply moving. At the same time, it's full of rich historical detail, dazzling critical inquiry, and political fury. I finished it - as I do all of Nović's work- brimming with equal parts rage and hope * Andrew Leland, author of The Country of the Blind *
This is not just a tremendous entry into the world of disability literature, it is a poignant tale of parenthood that should be mandatory reading for everyone. Nović gets to the heart of humanness without making loss, grief, or difference a disadvantage... A miracle of a book * Porochista Khakpour, author of Sick *
In this enraging history and big-hearted family saga, Sara Nović has skillfully subverted the dividing lines of identity, her deafness becoming the thread that connects us all * Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of Yellow Bird *
One of the most powerful memoirs I have read in years, a book I defy anyone to read without being challenged or changed. . . . A revelation and a reckoning * Nicole Chung, author of A Living Remedy *