May 5, 2026 (updated September 17, 2026) — Happy pub day to Mother Tongue (Random House) by Sara Novic! With starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal, and now nominated for a National Book Award, this memoir “offers a powerful critique of the systems that have marginalized deaf Americans across the decades. It’s a sobering must-read” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
About the Book
Sara Nović’s early years were steeped in 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 an existence 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 Nović’s personal story is a remarkable portrait of America through reflections on some of its most complex histories: 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.
“This is not just a tremendous entry into the world of disability literature, it is a poignant tale of parenthood that should be mandatory reading for everyone. Nović gets to the heart of humanness without making loss, grief, or difference a disadvantage. . . . A miracle of a book.”—Porochista Khakpour (CRF 2024)
Listen to an audio excerpt and more at penguinrandomhouse.com.