Review: "True Biz" by Sara Nović

 

True Biz by Sara Nović
Published April 2022 via Random House
★★★

There's a lot to like here: the focus on Deaf culture, the ongoing conflict about cochlear implants, the highlights of things like Black American Sign Language and how it came about—and why Black Deaf culture is in some ways stronger than white Deaf culture.

But the story...it did not suck me in. There's so much important information about the state of Deaf schools, and the risk that they'll be defunded, and so on and so forth. Much of it I was loosely familiar with (no connection to the Deaf world, I just read a lot), but a lot was also new, and I am glad that the book doesn't get tied up with a bow, because realistically the outcome was never going to be great. (Though—and warning for a spoiler!—if it ever comes out that a headmistress let some boys walk away with homemade bombs and a smile and a wink, uh, she's going to have some other things to worry about.) By the end, it felt a bit as though the author had started from a place of here's what hearing people should know about Deaf culture rather than here's a story I want to tell. She tells it well, because there's no denying that Nović can write, but I'm missing the raw power and energy of Girl at War.

Would still recommend this if you're curious about Deaf culture, or if Girl at War looks too violent, but it didn't sing to me in the way I'd hoped.