Mother Tongue: A Memoir of Family, Deafness and Identity

by Sara Nović

In this emotionally rich first memoir, 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 the journeys her own children must take.

'A book I want to press into everyone's hands... refuses to let us look away from how we fail disabled people - and shows us how we can do better' Esmé Weijun Wang

Sara Nović's early years were filled with 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, Nović sought out other deaf people and was welcomed into a tight-knit community rooted in the beauty and joy of American Sign Language. Nović realized that rather than maintaining the facade of her old life or trying to straddle two worlds, she would need to cultivate a life in the space between.

Now the mother of two young sons - one, biological and hearing, the other, adopted and deaf-Nović 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 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.

Nović'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.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Disability, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, LGBT, Biography

Audible Audio

First published May 5, 2026

About the author

Sara Nović is author of the novels TRUE BIZ and GIRL AT WAR, as well as the illustrated nonfiction collection AMERICA IS IMMIGRANTS. Both novels won the American Library Association's Alex Award, and True Biz was a Reese's Book Club pick and NYT bestseller.

MOTHER TONGUE, a new memoir hybrid, is out 5 May 2026 and available for pre-order now.

Sara teaches creative writing and deaf studies, and lives in Philly.

[website] https://sara-novic.com
[bsky] novicsara.bsky.social
[insta/threads] photonovic
[newsletter]: buttondown.com/signs+wonders

Reviews

[emma]

all authors i like should be required to write memoirs.

https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...

this is as well researched as it is emotive.

it covers so many topics — deafness, adoption, ableism, development, so many more — and it relates and explains each one with a deftness and depth that makes an extremely information-heavy book readable and searing.

the parts i loved most — unsurprisingly for a reader of mostly fiction and memoirs — were the moments when the learnings overlap with novic's lived experience, her marriage, her birth, her adoption. the fact this is both wide-ranging and extensive can make for some confusing timelines at moments, but that is a small price to pay for the stunning empathy of this read.

bottom line: sheesh.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

[Liralen]

When Nović was a teenager, she started to lose her hearing. At first, panicked and in denial, she hid the loss, developing a robust set of tricks and tactics to pass. And then, eventually, she got herself into an ASL class and unlocked a whole new world.

I read Nović's Girl at War some years ago and loved it. (It's been almost a decade, and I still think about it sometimes. If you can stomach some intensity, go read it.) And then I read True Biz, Nović's novel set at a school for the deaf, and while it was of course written well, what has stuck with me from that is the sense that what Nović really wanted to do was write a nonfiction book about deafness and deaf culture. And, well, now we have Mother Tongue, which is partly a memoir but also partly a nonfiction book about deafness and deaf culture, and it clicked for me in a way that True Biz did not.

Don't go into this expecting a detailed memoir; some of this is Nović's own story, but she is careful about which parts of her own story (and her family's) she chooses to share. But in practical terms, this is fascinating. I'd say that I've spent more time thinking about deafness and deaf culture than the average hearing person, but at the end of the day it's still an experience that is fundamentally not mine, and there's still far more that I don't know than what I do know. I might know theoretically that people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing face discrimination, but I hadn't thought about the disconnect, for example, between the push for oral-only education for deaf children (in other words: force them to use only cochlear implants and hearing aids and lip-reading, and deny them ASL) and the enthusiasm for simple sign language for young hearing children. Or this, during the early days of the pandemic:

But as shelter-in-place orders continued to roll out across the country and deaf students at residential schools were sent home from their dorms, I heard from a friend—a hearing teacher at a deaf school—about the frantic calls they were fielding from parents: that their children were completely out of control, and they could not communicate with them. Almost none of the parents knew even basic ASL, with one woman contacting the school begging for someone to please video-chat her young child and explain that it was time to go to bed. (loc. 1424*)

I just cannot imagine. I've read enough about deafness and politics around deafness and so on and so forth to think that if I had a kid with hearing loss I'd skip the cochlear implants, tap into whatever deaf community I could find, and put us both into sign language classes pronto. And while I'm not in anybody else's head or life, and I'm not here to judge people I know nothing about, and I don't know how fluent I'd be able to get or in what time frame if I were in someone else's shoes, I just cannot imagine knowing that the best way to communicate with my kid was to learn another language and then not learning even the basics in that language. Maybe this is less about those parents itself, though, and more about what Nović talks about throughout the book: the way that society at large has pushed people with disabilities to the margins and refused to make room for them.

At times I might have liked more about Nović's story (making no assumptions here, but it was not lost on me that she says little about her parents' eventual understanding of her hearing loss), but also, I hold a firm belief that memoirs need not be tell-alls and should only share as much that is personal as the author is comfortable sharing, so I can't really fault the book for that. Overall an excellent and thought-provoking read.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

[Brooklyn]

Thank your Random House for the advance copy. I found Mother Tongue to be spirited and revolutionary as well as educating. I came here for a memoir of growing up deaf in America - though Sara actually gradually became deaf. I have had some hearing / ear issues so I related to some of her school stories from secondary and college years. She is impassioned on her subject matter ableism vs rights of the deaf and disabled. She weaves this into the political history of this country and the growth of white supremicists and religious and political right - and how racism and other forms of discrimination tied in with discrimination against the deaf and how forced speaking methods rather than ASL were often pushed as society felt deaf were in some way defective without making much efforts to understand them.

As much as I learned - I would have liked a little more of her story and more of a memoir. And if that is what you are looking for - this is not it.

[Rachel]

I was very excited to read this, as an avid memoir lover and a fan of Sara Novic's past work (I really LOVED True Biz). I wanted to learn more about the author who wrote such a captivating story. Sadly, while this book was interesting and informative, the author did not deliver on the promise of a memoir. From the blurb, you'd expect a deeply personal story, but I feel like after finishing, I barely know anything about the author that I couldn't glean from a Wikipedia page.

About 10-15% of the book was about Novic, her journey to becoming deaf and toward motherhood by birth and by adoption. Each chapter had snippets about her life but then led to a long exposition about ableism, deaf history and systemic issues. Don't get me wrong - I learned A LOT. But I signed up for a memoir and this book didn't deliver on that front.

[Magdelanye]

Deafness occupies a liminal space in that it is sometimes considered an invisible disability. p53

People with language deprivation...often employ alternative methods of communicating....But without fluent command of language patterns, tools, and breadth, those thoughts can be difficult to find, or organize and make known. p211

Disabling forces are often the way we've structured our societies....p55

As much as we realize that on some level, everything is connected, it's wonderful to see such a clear example of How. Examining her life trajectory, the indomitable
Sara Novic connects the dots, having forged a path unique to her own special needs. From denial through resistance to an expanding awareness of possibilities, her highly nuanced memoir is embedded in the activist networks she discovers advocating not only for herself but others.

Despite what I want to believe about the power of well-meaning discourse...people with bad intentions can and will twist whatever evidence is available to them into support for their own perverse conclusions. p57

even well intentioned attempts to improve things within the confines of a racist and patriarchal system only feeds the machine that continues to bind all of us.
p131

It could be that because her intention is educational and her open approach is free of shame and blame, readers are encouraged to confront their own ableist assumptions. I certainly learned a lot I thought I knew, especially regarding the raging controversies around cochlear implants and Sign language.

To truly build a just system, the current one will have to be dismantled and reconfigured...people cannot acheive human rights on the backs of marginalized groups. p134

[Novel Visits]

MOTHER TOUNGUE by Sara Nović [Thanks to @prhaudio and @randomhouse for gifted copies of this book.]⁣
⁣
I’ve been a fan of Sara Nović’s novels, Girl at War and True Biz, so when I saw she had a memoir coming this year, I was eager to get to it. As it turns out MOTHER TONGUE is much more than a memoir. Nović wasn’t born deaf, instead her hearing deficits were first discovered by a school hearing test when she was 12. She fought for years, to keep anyone from knowing, to stay “normal,” so she’d continue to fit in. Eventually that just didn’t work any longer and by college she had to turn to help from the deaf community and to rights guaranteed her by the ADA. Embracing her deafness served to expand her world, enriching her communications with it.⁣
⁣
As the book opens, Nović is observing her two sons, barely a year apart. One born to her and hearing, the other, adopted from Thailand and deaf. She delves into her different journeys toward motherhood with both boys and how so much more advocating is required for a deaf child. The tight bonds within her family were truly beautiful.⁣
⁣
A large part of this memoir traces the long and bumpy fight for deaf education that continues to this day. It also traces the many prejudices held against deaf people throughout history, and again still continuing. They have had to fight for rights along with other marginalized groups in this country. She also touches on how changes to healthcare funding, the ADA, DEI, LBGTQ rights, and the dismantling of the Department of Education under the current administration are going to affect the deaf, along with so many other populations.⁣
⁣
I learned a lot both reading and listening to MOTHER TONGUE. I found it all at once interesting, educational, inspiring, uplifting, and scary. Whether you’re a Sara Nović fan or just interested in the world deaf people live in, I definitely recommend this memoir. She’s a fighter and an educator. I know I’m a little wiser for having read about the world in which she lives. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨⁣

[Andrea]

If Sara Novic writes it, I read it. For that reason I was excited to read her memoir Mother Tongue.

Sara's passion for the history and culture of deaf people comes through on the pages. The information was interesting and I definitely learned by reading this book.

As a reader I was expecting to get a bit more personal insight into Sara Novic's life and experiences. I felt like she held the readers at arms length, and at the same time I understand why. Her writing gets progressively more personal as the book goes on, but I wish she had warmed up sooner.

I would say this book is more of an examination of the social, cultural, and political history of deaf people with bits of memoir sprinkled in.

[kennedy parrish]

4.5 ⭐️ Sara Novic wrote one of my favorite novels a few years ago, and so obviously her memoir was at the top of my list to read in 2026.

🗣️READ THIS BOOK. If your life in any way grazes up against the deaf and hard of hearing communities, read this book. If you work in special education, read this book. If you work in healthcare, read this book. If you are in public health, government, law enforcement, translation services, advocacy work, social work, or simply want to be bowled over by incredible writing done with incredible care and research, read this book!!

[Sara]

Sara Nović just gets it, I say entirely selfishly as somebody who shares a number of identities, thought patterns, and personality traits with Sara Nović. I wanted a great deal more memoir content out of this, again selfishly as I am simply begging to be Sara Nović’s friend. It’s quite introductory as a nonfiction foray into deaf culture & history & other sociopolitical musings, but certainly useful for those who haven’t pondered this all too deeply before.

Loved the pandemic content. Loved the adoption content. Shed a number of tears. Should make my mom read this. Shed more tears at the thought of my mom reading this. Love, overall.

[Casey]

Language is a love code

[Richard Derus]

Longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

[Shannon]

I love motherhood memoirs but I really LOVE reading about disabled mother's experiences and Sara Novic provides a heartfelt, impactful and eye-opening look into mothering as a deaf/HOH queer woman in her new memoir.

She also is able to provide insights into both her traditional birth experience and her journey with adopting a deaf overseas child from Thailand. I enjoyed her combination of personal introspection and disability history/advocacy and highly recommend this for fans of books like Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy and @prhaudio for a complimentary ALC in exchange for my honest review.

[Sarah-Hope]

I've just finished reading Mother Tongue and this memoir/essay collection has moved and fascinated me to such an extent that I'm tempted to wait on writing my review. I am not, however, giving in to that temptation. Instead, I am going to begin by noting that This. Book. Has. So. Much. Going. On. And every bit of it is important.

Among the topics Mother Tongue explores—
• Motherhood
• Adoption as a process
• Adoption as an ethical issue
• Childbirth
• Deafness
• Creating and maintaining a bilingual home where all members are fully fluent in both English and ASL
• The intersection of conservative Christianity and disability
• The impact of growing up in "purity culture"
• Deaf education
• The spotty record of what can be achieved through cochlear implants
• The hearing community's assumption about what the deaf "need"
• Questions of language development
• Fighting educational red tape
• Queer identity
• The current attacks on disabled and gender noncomforming people
• The purpose of education for individuals and the communities within which they live

I could keep going with this list, but I'll pause here.

Basically, Sara Novic—one of my favorite writers—has written a brilliant work that pulls together all these different topics in ways that make sense. That makes for complexity, but Novic has the ability to detail the complex in ways that make it accessible to readers from a variety of backgrounds.

No piece of knowledge, no part of identity lies separate from others. Moving toward understanding requires, well, the best analogy I can come up with is a compound eye of the spirit. It's like looking through one of those insect-eye educational toys or standing in front of a dressing room mirror that gives gives us an infinitude of images of ourselves, every single one of them part of a truthful whole.

I finished reading this book yesterday. I liked/loved it enough that I immediately ordered copies for two friends. One works in the field of theatre accessibility and consent. The other is a mother of children. I didn't want either of them to be without this book any longer than it would take for the book to reach them through the mail. Then, I pre-ordered a copy of the large print edition, coming out in late July, for my wife and I to share. My review copy was electronic, but there are books that a) I want to share with my wife and b) want to reread myself in physical form, not just electronic, which makes large print essential.

I don't know that I've ever spent $100+ on multiple copies of a single book in a single hour, but yesterday doing that felt essential.

I received my review copy from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

[tillie hellman]

spectacular memoir with a lot of history, modern events, and social justice intertwined. this made me realize how little i think about disability/deaf rights and how little i knew. it was about more than that too, adoption and race and gender queerness and christianity and family etc etc. really well written and engaging, some really difficult parts but never so much that i didn’t want to come back to it. i’d recommend to anyone and everyone!!!

[Jerica Mercado]

I first encountered Sara Novic when I read True Biz, her novel about a school for deaf students. It was one of those reads I had seen hyped online, but worried it wouldn't measure up. It did. It was one of the best book club discussions my book club had because it was equal parts great fiction, following these compelling characters, and so eye-opening as we explored the world of education for deaf students.

Mother Tongue, which is Nović's memoir, feels like such a natural successor to True Biz. Nović blends history and politics with her own personal story, showing the areas where they intersect. I love the way she uses her own experiences of isolation and community to tell the history of deaf Americans and the struggle to establish a system of community in the face of so much hate and misunderstanding (and worse, but I'm afraid to use those words here). As a hearing person, I wasn't able to relate so much with Nović's experiences, but her stories and the facts she presented throughout this memoir were so well laid out that I know I'll be thinking about this all for some time to come. Especially moving were her chapters dedicated to adopting and then advocating for her son, K, Her examination of the importance of language acquisition in early life resonated particularly with me as a former TEFL teacher to early learners, and her recounting of the prejudices faced when trying to enroll K in a deaf school left me dumbfounded and enraged. And heartbroken. And inspired. In spite of the obstacles, she continues her advocacy and her children continue to thrive and I love that she took us readers on this journey.

This memoir has been illuminating, and it has humbled me-- I can say thank you and I can swear in American Sign Language, but not much else This memoir has helped me better understand the challenges of being deaf in today's world, and given me so much to think about. Nović is a strong writer and her stories about her life are sometimes heartbreaking, but also funny and self-deprecating. Reading this feels like having a drink with a friend that turns into an intense discussion about history and politics and ends with us both laughing about that one time that thing happened.

*I received a copy of the book from NetGalley and the publisher, Random House; this review is entirely my own.

[Kendall Hammonds]

Part memoir part history of deaf culture. Absolutely loved.

Eff you Alexander Graham Bell.

[Kat]

Fantastic book in DESPERATE need of line/copy edits

[Sasha]

I came in hoping that this would be a 5 star for me but there were just too many moments of hypocrisy, half baked thoughts, and confusion for me personally. But as someone in hearing healthcare, there were moments (like K’s story) and bits of insight/newfound information (the beef between Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet will stick with me lol) on deaf culture (deaf of deaf) and community that I think are important to know when working with the population

[Jill]

Sara Novic is obviously a very gifted writer. I just came to this book expecting a memoir, and found something much more like a history of ableism and deaf culture. Those parts were extremely well-written, but not the post-surgery summer read I need write now. Will return to this one later!

Reminds me of Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist. If that’s your jam, this probably will be too.

[Kyra]

Powerful. A little doom-and-gloom-y towards the end, but all totally justified & for good reason. ASL is so important!

[Elizabeth]

Only giving this 3 stars not because I’m rating Novic’s life or story, but just for the reading experience. Given that it said “a memoir” on the cover, I wasn’t expecting so much of the book to be a history of deaf education, culture, and advocacy. I did learn a lot and I’m glad for that, but I was expecting more from the memoir side of things.

[Shaun H]

This was a very informative and thought provoking read. Accounts from Novic’s life are woven in with information regarding Deaf history, culture, intersectionality, and the history and larger theme of how society at large has refused to make room for marginalized people and people with disabilities. A lot from this book will stick with me.

[Zara]

Fascinating. There’s so much I never knew (and never even considered) about deaf culture. Great storytelling. Highly recommend.

[ceci viana]

this was just brilliant. a beautiful cross between memoir and non-fiction about deaf history and culture. i loved getting to learn about these topics because i find them super interesting, but having nović's personal stories interwoven set this apart. this will probably be the best non-fiction that i read this year.

[Al]

While billed as a memoir, this book is, to a larger degree, a history lesson about deafness and the mistreatment of deaf people over the years. There is a fair amount about the author’s life, especially as it relates to the adoption of a deaf child, but at times it reads more like an educational text. The author is clearly passionate about the subject matter, and her personal connection to it makes the book that much more interesting.

There is a section on the Christian right and queerness that felt a bit like filler. A tangential association with the deaf community was made, but the section felt a bit out of place and didn’t really provide valuable insight.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Laurie • The Baking Bookworm]

Part non-fiction history book with its focus on Deaf culture, language deprivation and Deaf experience and part memoir, this book was a great exploration of the author's experiences and a crash course in oppression and advocacy.

Sara Nović was born hearing and became deaf in her early teens. In Mother Tongue, she shares her experiences, struggles and successes as a friend, daughter, and mother, helping readers to better understand what it feels like to not fit in; the exhausting and constant battle to be seen and valued in a society that is heavily influenced by ableism, devaluing anyone different from the status quo.

I went into this book knowing a lot about Deaf culture, history and ASL as a former ASL interpreter, but I appreciated Novic's deep dive into the politics, her experiences with adoption and the dark hold ableism still has over society. She goes into a lot more detail with some subjects than I was expecting, giving the book a nonfiction feel, but brings it back to how history and today's politics impact her and her young family. She keeps readers a bit at arm's length, but I respect how she draws the line, sharing with her readers only the bits of her life she's comfortable with.

Compelling and informative, Mother Tongue is an exploration of disability, oppression, Deaf advocacy and history, motherhood and the long-lasting impact of language deprivation. It will be an eye-opening read for many readers, giving them a better understanding of what it means to be Deaf in today's world.

Disclaimer: Thanks to the publisher for the complimentary digital advanced copy of this book which was given to me in exchange for my honest review.

[Ja]

In Nović's memoir, she delves into the Deaf community, her own hearing loss journey, and her experiences of her and her husband's journey adopting a child with hearing loss and what that was like. I think it's fair, as a memoir, that it comes with its own bias and viewpoint about Deafness.

Probably the most emotional and gripping part of the book were her accounts on her adoption journey and those early years raising their second child in a world that's pro-hearing and ablelist. I only wish we got more of that, but a good chunk of the book also explores the rich cultural Deaf history with some important facts for the reader. Unlike in True Biz, this at least matches the genre; I expect it from a non-fiction book. However, it did feel that the important history lessons weren't woven so seamlessly with her personal narrative. They were just there to explain. Ultimately, it gives the impression that there's a lot that Nović is holding back on her own life and story, which is odd that I feel like that when reading a memoir.

There's a lot of really great discourse here that deserves to be talked about and discussed, because the politics behind the fight for sign language is still very heated, and even some information is better than no information at all. Ultimately, if you read this, I would recommend reading more stories about Deaf culture, both for sign language as a communication tool and for cochlear implants, and everything in between.

[Jennifer]

This non-fiction book is by Sara Novic, who lost her hearing as a teenager and now as an adult is the mother of a biological hearing child and an adopted deaf child. This book is part memoir and part more general non-fiction, as Novic digs deeper into topics as they come up in her stories that she tells - about everything from the history of sign language and the opposing movement for oralism, ableism, the way both women and deaf people are not listened to by the medical system, post-partum depression, adoption, fundamentalist religion, and more.

This was an interesting one, both the more personal parts and the various other recounting of issues as well - not one that made me unable to put it down as I read it over the course of a month, but one I always enjoyed while reading. The last few chapters about adopting her deaf son from Thailand and his incredible learning sign language right on the border of language deprivation were particularly moving.

Books about the deaf experience are of particular interest to me because I have deaf family members. Indeed, I am going to recommend this one to my aunt and hopefully we can discuss it - we had a great conversation about Novic’s novel True Biz.

Thanks to Random House for my e-ARC (out now); all opinions are my own.

[Carrie]

I really enjoyed reading Novic's story. I appreciated learning all about her life and journey, but my biggest takeaways were about ASL.

I had no idea how controversial ASL has historically been in some circles. I don't understand why something that seems so useful (even to someone as removed from deaf culture as I am) has been such a target.

My other takeaway was a deep wish and dream that we could all be bilingual in English and ASL. Most people experience hearing loss as they age, and how great would it be if we could fall back on ASL as that time comes for nearly all of us (either in ourselves or our loved ones)? I think of how my grandma's extreme hearing loss has basically isolated her from community and connection, and how difficult it makes it for her to understand conversations about her health and well-being. How I would love to sign with her and talk to her like I used to. My brother has lost his voice indefinitely, another thing that happens to many for one reason or another, and it would be so nice to have something to bridge that gap. Or even in those situations at a loud concert or when the boat motor is too loud! The uses seem so practical and endless.

[Grace -thewritebooks]

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an eARC in exchange for an honest review

What an informative, accessible, personal book. It spans a wide range of topics: from adoption, to deaf history, to discrimination and intersectionality, to religion. All of it was fantastic, but what really impacted me the most was the conclusion. Novic looks towards our future, where what lies in store for the "curing" of deaf folks is unknown. We explore some serious potential repercussions for what we consider 'disability', and a very sobering point about US military funding. Having not already read True Biz, this was a powerful introduction to Novic's life and work and it has been a great to joy to learn so much about them.