Description
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Review Quotes: "Lucid and rigorously researched, Novic's memoir offers a powerful critique of the systems that have marginalized deaf Americans across the decades. It's a sobering must-read." --Publishers Weekly, starred review "A powerful and poignant account of learning to cherish differences . . . For anyone who has felt the need to hide their true self, who has struggled with the demands of parenting or found themselves underestimated, Mother Tongue looks at loss and adversity and what makes moving forward possible." --Booklist, starred review "This beautiful memoir about how it feels to be different belongs in every public library collection. Novic argues that access and language should be thoughtful and intentional and that no one should be relegated to the margins." --Library Journal, starred review "Novic is an expert at threading storytelling with research. Readers will come away from this exceptional memoir with not only a sense of Novic's experience, but a deeper understanding of Deaf culture as a whole." --BookPage Reading Line: New York Times bestselling author of True Biz Biographical Note: Sara Novic is the author of the New York Times bestseller True Biz and Girl at War, both of which won the American Library Association's Alex Award. She is an activist and an instructor of deaf studies and creative writing, and lives in Pennsylvania with her family. Publisher Marketing: The New York Times bestselling author of True Biz retraces her path out of the hearing world and into the deaf community--and seeks to understand what it means to raise children who are different from her--in this emotionally rich memoir. "In this enraging history and big-hearted family saga, Sara Novic has skillfully subverted the dividing lines of identity, her deafness becoming the thread that connects us all."--Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of Yellow Bird Sara Novic's early years were steeped in music, Bible study, and a strong desire to fit in. But when she failed her school's mandated hearing test, her worldview was thrown into chaos. Desperate not to be marked as different, she told no one, staying in the hearing world for as long as she could by brute force. Eventually unable to ignore the fact that she was deaf, Novic sought out other deaf people and was welcomed into a tight knit community rooted in the beauty and joy of American Sign Language. Novic realized that rather than maintaining the facade of her old life or trying to straddle two worlds, she would need to cultivate an existence in the space between. Now the mother of two young sons--one, biological and hearing, the other, adopted and deaf--Novic reflects on her life both before and after parenthood. She's raising her children within the deaf world, offering them things her younger self needed, all the while knowing that as her children grow, their own paths will branch off from hers in ways she cannot fully predict or plan for. Interwoven with Novic's personal story is a remarkable portrait of America through reflections on some of its most complex histories: the rise of the Christian right, the thorny world of international adoption, and above all, the deaf and disabled communities' stubborn survival in the face of persistent oppression. Novic's clear, bold voice is one readers will hold onto, learn from, argue with, and be inspired by, as she asks us to recognize difference as a source of opportunity rather than fear, as a chance to draw families and communities together, and to build something new. Review Citations:
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Mother Tongue: A Memoir
$34.80