"True Biz" is an ASL idiom meaning "for real." The truth in Novic's novel may be open to interpretation (see what I did there?) or, more accurately, positionality. There are multiple narrators, but the primary two are Charlie and February. Their turns are signaled by the ASL character for the first letter in their names--same for the other occasional narrators. Sometimes I don't like philosophical or instructional asides in books, but in this case, the ASL and deaf history lessons/lesson plans are contextual and enriching.

"DID YOU KNOW?
"Deaf scholars have proven that Deafness meets the requirements to be considered an ethnicity."

"Black American Sign Language (BASL) is a dialect of ASL used by Black Americans in the United States, often more heavily in Southern states. ASL and BASL diverged as a result of race-based school segregation. Because student populations were isolated from one another, the language strands evolved separately, to include linguistic variations in phonology, syntax, and vocabulary."

February, a CODA (child of deaf adults) is the headmaster at a school for the deaf, and Charlie, who has hearing parents and cochlear implants is failing to thrive, is February's newest pupil. Charlie arrives without much sign language and a lot of frustration with her shitty implants and inability to speak and be heard--especially by her mother. She's been mainstreamed her whole life, which concerns February. Language acquisition is much harder after a certain age--and acting out when you can't communicate is common.

"It was hard to imagine what the world might be life if deaf people had as short a fuse about hearing people's inability to sign, their neglect or refusal to caption TV, or, hell, the announcements on this bus. Of course, that was their privilege--to conflate majority with superiority."

Charlie actually does pretty well, though. Despite keeping up with a Bad Boy from her old high school, she's also got a flirtation going with the Deafest boy in the school--Austin, whose family's deafness goes back four generations. Austin's dad, though, is hearing, and an interpreter, which gives the family access to the hearing world, as well as the Deaf one.

I liked living in Charlie and February's world. They're both complex characters--Charlie with her grubby musician lover and February with her hearing wife and passion for Deaf education--and both with a tiny penchant for self-destruction.

The grubby musician is part of a revolutionary punk band/anarchist cell who says at one point, "I mean, this shit's all over the internet. The trick is being able to look it up without getting tracked. We used to have an in for burner library cards..." lol--love "burner" library cards!

Thanks, NetGalley, for the digital review copy!