Mother Tongue

“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. Mother Tongue is a moral force, and a salve.”—Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of Yellow Bird

“Mother Tongue is 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

“Mother Tongue is 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

“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.”—Greg Marshall, author of Leg

“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

“Mother Tongue 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

“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

“Lucid and rigorously researched, Nović’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. Nović 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