Connecting to Community
True Biz highlights a coming-of-age story that is filled with protest and protection of rights. It explores how different communities and identities share common obstacles and experiences. The residents come from diverse backgrounds, representing a mosaic of statuses, but united by a shared sense of belonging.
Types of Community
Deaf Community: individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing, in addition to their friends, families, and allies. They come together to understand one another and advocate for accessibility, celebrate their unique language, and support one another in a hearing world. It introduces diverse stances based on different experiences in the deaf community. The novel even includes a fingerspelling as the title for each chapter, providing readers an insight into how different thing can be for the deaf community.
Activism Community: the characters display a strong sense of self-advocacy, taking control of their care. Oftentimes, people with disabilities can be overlooked and not given proper accomodations. This allows the characters to let others know how to access assistance, in addition to the author showing readers the same thing. Specifically, Charlie demonstrates that needs should be met and health care is essential to help her live day-to-day life. The novel highlights the marginalization of people who are deaf- where there is ASL stigma and an abuse of power by the hearing world.
Social Community: Those within and not necessarily in the deaf community all come together in the novel. February is a CODA (child of deaf adult) who is not deaf or hard of hearing, but immerses herself nonetheless. She takes on the role of headmistress of the school, not to prove herself, but to do anything to help out the population of deaf students in her neighborhood. The novel mainly highlights the deaf community, but also what others are doing to help assist deaf people. The setting is in the contemporary everyday American world and focuses in on the new challenges, developing relationships, and other eventuful moments of high-school life. The characters are not always defined by their deafness, they have a much more important place in the world!
“Kept apart from one another, deaf children frequently receive not only substandard education without full access to language, but a suppressed understanding of the self that can only be righted by representation and a sense of larger community belonging." - Novic