Philadelphia author Sara Nović began her new book, the memoir Mother Tongue, as letters to her two sons: S, her biological son who is hearing, and K, her adopted son, who is deaf.

Nović set out to tell them the story of her life — offering them lessons that she needed when she was younger. But quickly the project grew, encompassing her journey before and after parenthood, the story of how she lost her hearing, learned American Sign Language and embraced the deaf community.

Dovetailing with her personal narrative is a robust history of deaf culture and education for deaf people in the U.S., tracing how Alexander Graham Bell’s school for the deaf was heavily influenced by the rise of the Christian Right — and how that approach continues to lead to the oppression of deaf people today.

Bell championed teaching lip reading and prioritizing spoken language in education for deaf people because he viewed ASL as a threat to spoken English and America’s cultural identity. Today, as many as 70 percent of deaf children experience language deprivation, in part because doctors, educators and others encourage parents to prioritize — or often exclusively use — spoken languages over sign languages.

Nović traces that history to the current moment, when the Trump administration is decimating the Department of Education and threatening funding from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). But even before that, the U.S. was one of three countries that failed to ratify the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, thirty-eight senators opposed ratification, arguing, in part, that “declaring that disabled people have human rights … might infringe upon their parents’ rights,” Nović writes.

The book will be released on May 5, but is available for pre-order now. Nović will be hosting a book launch for Mother Tongue at Old Pine Community Center in Society Hill on May 7 from 7 to 9pm. Ahead of the event, we spoke over Google Meet, using the captioning feature and chatted about the process of writing the book, how medical and educational institutions fail deaf people and where she’s finding hope these days.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me the origin story of Mother Tongue.

The book started as letters to my kids and the way that I was writing them was very separate. I thought, Oh, well, this kid’s going to need to know this thing, and this kid’s going to need to know this thing.

But while I was doing that, I saw those lines break down in different ways for myself and also for them. Obviously we can’t really separate ourselves out into just one specific part of our identity. So then I switched gears and was writing more generally to both of them.

Meanwhile, I was doing a lot of research for the more historical, reported parts of the book and the project got bigger in scope. I think that that really mirrors the way that we function in the real world. All of us — all the parts of our identity — are tied together in interesting and complicated ways. It was fun to see the project grow, and I hope that it’s more fun to read too. I think that there’s more ways in for people now.

The book has threads of both memoir and historical research into education for deaf people in America, and how the oralism movement — which prioritizes spoken language over sign language — intersects with the rise of the Christian right. Bell himself supported the eugenics movement in the U.S. and was anti-immigration. How did you approach weaving the different threads together?

It’s easy to weave those histories together because they are one history. It’s something that I think people try to separate because it’s really uncomfortable to think about how this specific pedagogy is actually not rooted in evidence-based practice. Once I gave in to connecting those things, it was very clear how they were linked.

In terms of the personal and the historical, I think for me, as a person who was not born deaf and became deaf, I had to learn that history. So it felt natural for me to include the personal journey I went through to learn my own history. And that’s true for many deaf people. Most deaf people are coming from hearing families where they don’t necessarily have access to sign language or culture in a meaningful way until they can connect with other deaf people.

The book outlines how the legacy of oralism continues to this day in schools, often leading to language deprivation in deaf children, and shared your own challenges securing accommodations for K. How do you see these challenges intersect with the right’s campaign for “parental choice” in education?

Most people today are familiar with that phrase parental choice through things that we’ve seen more recently — like Moms for Liberty, or these other kinds of book banning initiatives or anti-trans initiatives.

But it’s a very old tactic that we have seen in the deaf community for a long time. People say, oh, it should be a parent’s choice how their kid communicates or how they want them to be educated.

But they really only mean it’s a parent’s choice if they choose one specific path — [in the case of deaf students oral education] — just like how parental choice for book banning means that one parent is going to decide for everyone what’s acceptable for kids to access.

It’s pretty insidious, but it seems to be an effective tactic, unfortunately. We see in the deaf community that parental choice is often not extended to deaf and disabled parents. It’s now popping up in all these different spheres, but it’s something that the deaf community has experienced for a long time. It’s one of the ways people in power control narratives and resources.

A large part of the story centers around your struggle with internalized ableism when you began to lose your hearing and your later experience finding connection and joy in the deaf community. There are points in the narrative where you go back and tell the reader parts you “left out” — about your heart condition, about your relationship to religion — from your personal history. I’m curious what the process of crafting the memoir threads was like for you?

It’s funny, because I’m in a group chat with writers who are much more organized. They’re using outlines. One of them said, I write the back jacket copy first and then I can look back at it to make sure the book is lining up with the story I envisioned.

I mean, that sounds amazing, but I could never do it. For me, writing is more of a discovery process. I don’t know what I’m going to say when I sit down to write. That’s part of what makes it fun. I think if I had a goal in mind, I would be less interested in finishing.

People are afraid of disability. People have been brought up to look away from disabled people, and this is the result of that.

So part of it is the structure of the book reflects the process of writing for me. I would be working on it and there were moments when I was like oh, I didn’t think about how these two things connected until much later. I like that the book reflects that structurally. It feels very much like the journey of life, where you feel like you have a handle on yourself and then something pops up and throws everything on its head. That happens every day when you’re a parent.

The chapter with the medical stuff was a good example of it. Physically, I liked breaking the rhythm of the book because that specific medical condition is about the rhythm of my heart being fucked up.

With the church stuff, it’s something I didn’t really examine at the time, but looking back, now that I have all these other experiences and tools, I can say okay, this is what was going on here. So I like that the book’s structure mirrors how life actually happens, which is not in a straight line.

There’s a lot of examples of systems failing — doctors and educational institutions failing to help your adopted son, your own struggle to be believed about your heart condition. What do you think it would take to create systems where marginalized people are not just believed, but supported?

I think the truth probably is that the systems are not failing. I think they’re working as designed. The medical system is designed to eradicate deafness and deaf people, and you see that at the end when the book looks at the work towards all these gene therapies and editing.

It’s the same thing with the education system. A lot of our education system — for all students — is based on how can we get students to comply? And for disabled students, that’s especially true. It’s not necessarily about what’s the best way for them to learn.

I think we need to shift the goals of what we are trying to do with these systems and that will require marginalized people being in positions of power in those institutions. We’re starting to see that happen a bit more, but it’s a slow, slow process. I still see all these articles popping up in the higher education space, saying things like too many students have accommodations. There’s too many disabled people. I think we see that happening because there’s not enough disabled people represented in the higher ed space as faculty. If able-bodied faculty had been collaborating and working with disabled colleagues, maybe they would see that that’s not the case. We’re not at odds with one another.

I think that’s probably true of most spaces. People are afraid of disability. People have been brought up to look away from disabled people, and this is the result of that.

Your first novel Girl at War considers how history shapes the individual and your second True Biz, takes place at a residential school for the deaf. What felt different about approaching these themes in fiction vs. nonfiction?

I always kind of joke that Girl at War and True Biz are the same book, because they’re both about language, how that impacts your identity, and how to find your place in the world. It’s not like those questions are ones you can solve. There’s no easy answer. So I’m going to keep asking them. I think these questions are always going to be in the background of my work. I’ll always be finding new ways of asking them, of thinking about them.

I’m a person who likes research. I did a lot of research for both of my fiction books. So that’s not necessarily a difference, but it was fun to nerd out and in a way in nonfiction that you don’t necessarily get to do without interrupting things in a fictional story.

But really the impetus for working in nonfiction was that this project started in real life, with letters to my kids. That was the shape that it took. I didn’t necessarily think about it like Oh, now I can do this thing that I’ve been waiting to do that I couldn’t do in fiction.

During the writing — and now as the book comes out — there have been attacks on and attempts to abolish the Department of Education by the Trump administration. You mention something I haven’t seen discussed as much, which is the switch in funding for IDEA funds. Previously, these funds were earmarked for students with disabilities, but now they might not be protected. What effects would that have on special education in our public schools?

It would decimate it in a lot of places. IDEA is already very underfunded. Most school districts are getting like 13 to 40 percent of their IDEA funding from the federal government and they have to try to scramble to make up the rest.

But if districts start getting a block grant from the federal government — where it doesn’t have any strings attached — and they’re already losing all this other funding from other places simultaneously, it will harm disabled students. Districts are going to make the choice between can I give this individual student a specific therapy or, can I keep the lights on? Can I pay my teachers? It’s an impossible choice and it’s not fair that they have to make that choice in the first place.

But historically, we know when they’re forced to make that choice it’s going to be disabled people who are viewed as expendable first. It’s very concerning that we are going to lose those safeguards. The money they had was already not enough, but now it’s not going to be guarded at all. It’s very scary.

You write about your boys “Sometimes it’s difficult to hide my fears from them, but mostly their enthusiasm is infectious, and, awash in their optimism and sometimes against reason, I too see hope in the future.” I think that’s a sentiment a lot of parents echo. Obviously there’s a lot that’s horrific and frightening right now — war, ICE raids, police brutality, climate destruction — where are you finding hope for the future?

It’s interesting. They’re a couple years older now then they were when I turned in this book, and so they’re so much more aware of things around them. They know about ICE, they know about some of the terrible stuff that’s happening, and those conversations are really hard, especially with K, who knows he was not born here, so he’s like, what if ICE shows up? It really sucks to have that conversation with a seven or eight-year-old kid.

But I think that’s also where the hope comes from. They are so small, and they understand a lot, and intuitively, they know what is wrong about what’s happening. I hope that as a parent, I can kind of support and foster their desire to fix things. They have that in them and I think most kids have that in them. They see what is fair and not fair. They see what is right or wrong. As a parent, you can either support them in that, or tear that down in them.

When I’m talking to kids, I feel very hopeful, because they know and I hope that we can turn it all around for them and with them.

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