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 *

Sara Novic teaches in the Popular Fiction MFA program at Emerson College, and is an instructor of Deaf studies at Stockton University. Her first novel, Girl at War, won the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Novic has an MFA in fiction and literary translation from Columbia University, and lives with her family in Philadelphia.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.