True Biz (by Sara Nović)

This was chosen for the "book by a Deaf author" category of the Read Harder Challenge, and I found it really enlightening and interesting about Deaf culture, including a number of nonfiction vignettes to give additional history into Deaf history, Black ASL culture, and the ways in which Deaf education has been suppressed in the name of "inclusion."

Unfortunately as a novel, it didn't work as well for me.  It's set at a boarding school for the Deaf and told from three main perspectives - Charlie, who has a cochlear implant that doesn't work well and never had the opportunity to learn sign language; Austin, who comes from a Deaf family; and February, the headmistress and a Child of Deaf Adults (CODA).  There are occasional mini-chapters told from other points of view as well.

The author I think sympathizes with the "fight oppression through violence and anarchy" approach and the novel seems to be didactically reinforcing those views. The actual plotlines remain sketchily resolved, or completely unresolved.  I was interested in how things would turn out but... there's really very little to go on by the end. We vaguely get the sense of February's marriage plotline (the least interesting one) and Austin and Charlie we're left to mostly guess about.  

It's a weird space because I'm very glad I read it and became more educated about Deaf culture but also I wish it had been more subtle in its approach and more concerned with succeeding as a work of fiction at the same time.