TEXT View source
# 2025-06-30 - True Biz by Sara Nović
True biz (adj./exclamation; American Sign Language):
really, seriously, definitely, real-talk
I almost quit reading this book because it felt so harsh in the
beginning. I am glad i stuck with it, because it tells an interesting
story. I think that harshness was an unrelenting realism, true to the
title. This book is a coming of age story about a Deaf girl who is
growing up in a blighted community. In many ways she is profoundly
unprivileged. She has a bad cochlear implant and suffers language
deprivation and behavioral problems.
This book is educational in multiple ways. There is some overlap
between True Biz and Deaf Utopia, but they are very different kinds
of books. Both books are personal and have lessons about Deaf
culture and history. Deaf Utopia is more autobiographical and has a
decided focus on the author's life. True Biz is fiction and felt to
me like it had a more expansive scope, giving a stronger, starker
vision of Deaf community.
DIR Deaf Utopia
What follows are interesting excerpts from the book.
> Those who are born deaf all become senseless and incapable of
> reason. --Aristotle, 384-322 BCE
> Those who believe as I do, that the production of a defective race
> of human beings would be a great calamity to the world, will
> examine carefully the causes that lead to the intermarriages of the
> deaf with the object of applying a remedy.
> --Alexander Graham Bell, 1883
> A manufacturer of amazing medical devices known as cochlear
> implants, which restore hearing to the deaf, sold defective
> implants to young children and adults for years--even after
> learning that a significant number of the devices had failed.
> --NBC News, March 14, 2014
* * *
There was a theory among linguists that the brain's capacity for
language learning--language as a concept, a modality for thought--is
finite. Scientists called the period from ages zero to five the
"critical window," within which a child had to gain fluency in at
least one language, any language, or risk permanent cognitive damage.
Once the window shut, learning anything became difficult, even
impossible--without a language, how does one think, or even feel?
The critical window remained "theoretical," mostly because
intentionally depriving children of language was deemed by ethicists
too cruel an experiment to conduct. And yet, February saw the
results of such trials every day--children whose parents had feared
sign language would mark them, but who ended up marked by its
absence. These children had never seen language as it really was,
outside the speech therapist's office, alive and rollicking, had
never been privy to the chatter of the playground or around the
dinner table.
There was no reason assistive technology and sign language should be
an either-or-affair; time and time again some of her strongest
students proved that, when it came to language, more is more. Often
when she found herself in pedagogical arguments with fellow
administrators across the district, she put it this way: imagine
telling someone that learning French would ruin their kid's English,
hurt their brain. Usually people scoffed at her and February would
nod. It /did/ sound ridiculous. And yet, though fear of
bilingualism in two spoken languages has been dismissed as xenophobic
nonsense, though it was now desirable for hearing children to speak
two languages, medicine held fast to its condemnation of ASL.
* * *
February had been born on the edge of East Colson in her family's
blue clapboard house, in the back bedroom that would later become her
own. ...
February's mother was slight and asthmatic and would certainly have
benefited from some medical oversight during labor, but she had long
made up her mind to have her baby at home. It would be much scarier,
even dangerous, to give birth in a place where no one knew sign
language. The Deaf community was replete with hospital horror
stories, particularly of the labor and delivery variety. Her
mother's friend Lu had been wheeled into the OR without anyone
telling her that she was about to have a cesarean; a woman down in
Lexington had died of a blood clot after nursing staff ignored her
complaints of pain she'd scrawled on a napkin. The Americans with
Disabilities Act, which would mandate that hospitals provide
accommodations to deaf patients, was still more than a decade away.
So February's mother wasn't taking any chances--if she couldn't have
an epidural, at least she would know what the hell was going
on.
* * *
# Ear Vs Eye: Deaf Mythology
Eyeth--get it?
In the Deaf storytelling tradition, utopia is called Eyeth because
it's a society that centers the eye, not the ear, like here on
Earth.
In the Deaf world, there's a famous story about a utopian planet
where everyone signs and everything is designed for easy visual
access. In some tellings, hearing people are the minority and learn
to conform to the majority sign language, in others the planet is
completely Deaf. Have any of you seen an Eyeth story?
Eyeth may be a pun, but it's not a joke--it's a myth.
## Myth (N):
1. a traditional story that reveals part of the worldview of a
people, or embodies the ideals and institutions of a society
2. parable; short ficticious story that illustrates a moral attitude
or principle
The importance of Eyeth in Deaf culture is twofold. First, it
highlights the things we value: sign language, communication,
accessibility, community. It expresses our dreams: equality, a
special place to call our own free from the demands of hearing
society, recognition of our culture.
Eyeth is also important because it reinforces Deaf culture as a
culture. Storytelling and myths are an important part of what makes
us human and a common thread across all kinds of ethnic groups.
## Did You Know?
* Deaf scholars have proven that Deafness meets the requirements to
be considered an ethnicity.
* Historically this was the common view before oral education nearly
eradicated sign languages.
* Even Alexander Graham Bell, who wanted to rid society of deafness,
spoke of "a race of Deaf people."
HTML Eyeth by Kelsey Young
* * *
In education, like everything in America, money ruled the day, and
Deaf education had been hyperstratified by the rise of the cochlear
implant. Wealthier kids whose parents could pay out-of-pocket for
surgery and rehabilitative therapies often found success in the
mainstream; kids whose families couldn't pay stayed deaf. But even
as a shift in Medicaid coverage meant access to the device itself
increased, access to the therapies and educational resources didn't.
The hearing world was shocked to find that the working-class kid of a
single mom who couldn't stay home and funnel practice sounds into his
head, or drive him to countless therapy appointments all day, was not
"cured" as the implant sales reps had promised. Those kids often
wound up back at Deaf schools only now with vast cognitive deficits.
The more vulnerable her student body was, the less politicians cared,
or even pretended to care, about their fate. She wrote to the new
legislators anyway, but seldom heard [ha ha] back.
* * *
In the late 19th century, manual language versus oral communication
for deaf children was a hot topic of debate among educators, embodied
by Thomas H. Gallaudet, the cofounder of the American School for the
Deaf, and your friendly neighborhood eugenecist, Alexander Graham
Bell.
Gallaudet, who'd learned sign language from French teacher of the
deaf Laurent Clerc, had seen the success of signing Deaf schools
firsthand in France, making him a strong proponent of signed
languages. But Bell believed deaf people should be taught to speak,
and sign language should be removed from Deaf schools.
Q: Why would a man with a deaf wife and mother want to eradicate sign
language?
A: Eugenics
In his words:
> Those who believe as I do, that the production of a defective race
> of human beings would be a great calamity to the world, will
> examine carefully the causes that lead to the intermarriages of the
> deaf with the object of applying a remedy.
> --Alexander Graham Bell, 1883
Eugenics was a popular pseudoscience at this time in the U.S., and
Bell was a big advocate. The belief was used to justify the forcible
sterilization of disabled people, a program that Hitler admired and
is said to have learned from.
Bell was against forced sterilization himself, but instead believed
getting rid of sign language was the key to eradicating deafness.
Without sign, deaf people would integrate into the general population
rather than marry one another, thereby producing fewer deaf babies.
Besides his ethics, Bell's actual science was wrong--most deafness
isn't directly hereditary--but his ideas remain prevalent in deaf
education circles today.
Delegates At The Milan Conference In 1880
-----------------------------------------
Hearing: 163
Deaf: 1
In 1880, educators gathered in Milan, Italy, to discuss the state of
deaf education. The delegates had been handpicked by the oralist
society sponsoring the conference with the express goal of
eliminating manual language from schools.
The conference passed eight resolutions, effectively banning signed
language from schools for the deaf around the world for about 80
years. Some schools, including the school that would become
Gallaudet University, pushed back against the resolutions, but most
adopted them.
## Milan's First Resolution:
The Convention, considering the incontestable superiority of
articulation over signs in restoring the deaf-mute to society and
giving him a fuller knowledge of language, declares that the oral
method should be preferred to that of signs in education and the
instruction of deaf-mutes (Passed 160-4)
## Milan's Second Resolution:
The Convention, considering that the simultaneous use of articulation
and signs has the disadvantage of injuring articulation and
lip-reading and the precision of ideas, declares that the pure oral
method should be preferred (Passed 150-16)
Where Milan's resolutions were implemented, deaf children were
forbidden from using sign language in the classroom or outside of it.
As punishment, hands were tied down, rapped with rulers, or slammed
in drawers. The period between 1880 and 1960 is considered the dark
age of deaf education.
In the U.S., the National Association of the Deaf, founded in 1880 in
response to the conference, became the first disability rights
organization, and was and is run by Deaf people.
Worried that ASL would become extinct, they also used brand-new film
technology to document the language, making some of the earliest
recordings of their kind.
Milan's Legacy
--------------
1. Deaf teachers removed from schools because they cannot teach
orally
2. Deaf students language deprived, no deaf role models
3. Fewer successful deaf professionals
4. Deafness further stigmatized
Point 4 creates a feedback loop returning to point 2.
In the U.S., eugenics became unpopular after it was associated with
Nazism. Subsequent deaf education conferences have apologized for
the harm done by the Milan resolutions. Science has proven ASL is a
fully realized language, and that its use does not inhibit the
learning of speech. Nevertheless, the shadow of eugenics persists in
medicine and education today. The Alexander Graham Bell Association
continues to advocate for the pure oral method of educating deaf
children.
author: Nović, Sara, 1987-
TEXT detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Sara_Novic
LOC: PS3614.O929 T78
tags: book,deaf,fiction,queer
title: True Biz
# Tags
DIR book
DIR deaf
DIR fiction
DIR queer