Deaf Utopia: A Memoir – And a Love Letter to a Way of Life by Nyle DiMarco with Robert Siebert
Summary: In this moving and engrossing memoir, Nyle shares stories, both heartbreaking and humorous, of what it means to navigate a world built for hearing people. From growing up in a rough-and-tumble childhood in Queens with his big and loving Italian-American family to where he is now, Nyle has always been driven to explore beyond the boundaries given him. A college math major and athlete at Gallaudet—the famed university for the Deaf in Washington, DC—Nyle was drawn as a young man to acting, and dove headfirst into the reality show competitions America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars—ultimately winning both competitions. Deaf Utopia is more than a memoir, it is a cultural anthem—a proud and defiant song of Deaf culture and a love letter to American Sign Language, Nyle’s primary language. Through his stories and those of his Deaf brothers, parents, and grandparents, Nyle opens many windows into the Deaf experience.

DiMarco’s memoir is open and honest, at turns hilarious and poignant. The subtitle “A memoir – and a love letter to a way of life” is right on; DiMarco draws back the curtain on what it was like to grow up in a big Deaf family, from the joys of ASL signs zinging around the dinner table to the tragedies of discrimination from the hearing world and the language deprivation experienced by his father. In describing his experiences on America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars, he offers a clear-eyed understanding of the ways producers shape the narratives in reality TV, while also cogently analyzing the accessibility fails along the way. Through candid anecdotes, he tracks his changing understanding of his own sexuality, finally embracing his queer identity. Throughout the narrative, the book weaves in just enough background information about ASL and Deaf culture and history to help even newcomers to the topic understand how DiMarco’s personal story fits into the bigger picture of the multifaceted Deaf community.

DEAF UTOPIA is out now.

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True Biz by Sara Nović
Summary: True biz (adj/exclamation; American Sign Language): really, seriously, definitely, real-talk
True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history final, and have doctors, politicians, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they’ll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who’s never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school’s golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another–and changed forever.

This is a brutal, glorious read that invites hearing readers into the perspectives of members of the Deaf community, and gives Deaf readers a mirror of their own beautiful, complex culture that is rarely seen in written literature. The author provides background and context for readers unfamiliar with ASL and Deaf Culture through strategically placed handouts from Charlie’s history class that explain everything from name signs to the impact of Deaf President Now. Every word, every sign illustration, every snippet of dialogue works together to create a verbal picture – even the formatting. Over the years, novelists have used many different methods to show ASL, which has no written form, on the page. Nović’s approach is astonishingly effective. Spoken dialogue contains no quotation marks, with nothing to set it apart from narration; it is simply part of the visual landscape, just as it would be for a Deaf person attempting to speechread. Signed communication, in contrast, is italicized and located in different places on the page to represent who is communicating. This creates a sense of visual distinction and echoes the use of space in American Sign Language. Nović expertly weaves in multiple character points of view to showcase the diversity of the Deaf community, exploring everything from cochlear implants to Black ASL to the state of residential schools to the struggle of CODAs (hearing children of deaf adults) to move between two worlds – all with a nuance, authenticity, and depth rarely seen in mainstream literature. With so many weighty topics to explore, a lesser author would get bogged down. But Nović’s story soars as it navigates the shifting relationships at its heart, always returning to the connections woven in the community.

TRUE BIZ is out now.

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Deaf Ministry: Ministry Models for Expanding the Kingdom of God by Leo Yates Jr

This book is geared to those involved in Christian ministry who wish to create or expand ministry to Deaf people within their churches. Yates begins with an overview of deafness and Deaf Culture, with a particular emphasis on how both may impact a Deaf individual’s experiences of church. He then explores various models of Deaf ministry, ranging from the Deaf Church, where the dominant language is American Sign and the liturgy may be adapted for Deaf congregations, to Interpreted Ministry, where access is provided to hearing church services and certain activities via an ASL interpreter, to Hard-of-Hearing and Late-Deafened Ministry, which focuses on access for those who do not use ASL to communicate. Yates also offers information on Deaf-blind Ministry, Deaf Advocacy, Deaf Missions, and Disability Ministry (which may or may not include the Deaf community), as well as an excellent chapter discussing the idea of the Multicultural Church, which strives to integrate the needs of Hearing, Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, Late-deafened, and Deaf-blind individuals, and brings both hearing and Deaf culture values into its services.
Yates gives an excellent overview of the different ways that Deaf individuals may be integrated into a church community, with lots of specific resources relating to provision of interpreters, accommodations checklists, and case studies showing how other churches have done it. This is a must-have resource for anyone looking to start a Christian Deaf ministry.