I did not know how disenfranchised the community is. “True Biz” by Sara Novic opened my eyes to the deaf community and their struggles. I 100% fully recommend this book! especially if you ever wanted to learn more about deaf culture and ASL! the students’ lives and experiences at school are amazing springboards for discussing language, accessibility, cultural differences, and acceptance. do a great job at demonstrating the difficulties that inherently affect the deaf community, but they also are great examples of how those challenges are constantly being overcome. i understand why the adult POVs are included in terms of giving the reader the full picture, but i think the story could have also succeeded without them.īecause charlie, austin, and co. i found february and the adult POVs to pale in comparison to the students, so much so that i started skimming februarys chapters towards the end just so i could quickly get back to the kids. definitely one of the most educational stories i have read in awhile and i dont think it would be an over-exaggeration to say this should be required reading.Īnd this for sure would have been a 5 star read if it was only about charlie and austin and the students at the school. Absorbing and assured, idiosyncratic and relatable, this is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection.

This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, disability and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another's-and changed forever. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person before Austin, the school's golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both. True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals, and have politicians, doctors, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. TRUE BIZ (adj./exclamation American Sign Language): really, seriously, definitely, real-talk

True Biz by Sara Nović