A Deaf Manifesto on Motherhood

At age 12, Sara Nović went deaf, but not all at once. First, she lost the wind, then the dripping of a leaky faucet, and then certain consonants. She writes in her memoir, “What is a mother tongue, and how do you get one? What if your mother has no tongue? What if you have no mother?” 

For much of her adolescence, Nović masked both her disability and her queerness, until an experience of spiritual humilit...