Well, last week was a week over here. I became an auntie! K turned six! And True Biz was selected as the 2024 One Book, One Philly read.
For those who don’t know, One Book is a 22-year tradition in which the Free Library chooses a book and helps coordinate, “seven weeks of events aim to foster literacy, library usage, and civic dialogue through all corners of the city.”
True Biz has done a lot of cool things in its lifespan—firsts both for me as a writer and for the deaf community at large—but being celebrated at home feels different somehow. Philly is a vastly underrated city in most things, but particularly the literary. For a full-on love letter to Philly, here’s my essay for the Wildsam travel guide about the city in the run-up to the Eagles’ first ever Super Bowl win. (And yes, its headline was written by an outsider lol)
Anyway, as a reader, I’ve been reading the One Book picks for a long time. I’ve grown up seeing the ads on our buses. And now, maybe my kids will see my book on the back of a bus, too.
(Locals, if see True Biz on the back of a SEPTA bus, please take a picture? There is almost nothing cooler in my house than large vehicles.)
Save the Date
One Book programming kicks off at the Free Library on 8 April, with PSD Head of School Melissa Draganc-Hawk, and closes on 22 May with genius poet Ilya Kaminsky.
In between, the Free Library will run programming on local anarchism, Black ASL, disability justice, and the infamous Philly ASL accent. Branch locations across the city will also run buddy reads and additional programs. Copies have gone out to district high schools, too.
I’ll circle back with a calendar of events when all the times are finalized.
Companion Reads
The libraries will also be running programming for young readers!
For middle grade: Whitney Gardner’s You’re Welcome, Universe.
For kiddos: Raymond Antrobus’ Can Bears Ski?
If you want to follow along with the city’s One Book One Philly newsletter you can sign up here.
Freeze frame
It’s kind of strange to be a deaf person in Philly right now. Across the river, the local ACLU chapter of Delaware attacked deaf schools for their bilingual programming. Down the street at Children’s Hospital, they restored an 11 year old’s hearing with gene therapy to much media adoration. Those in power wish us gone, and they have the capacity to grant that for themselves.
And yet, ASL and Deaf culture have never been more popular. We're consistently breaking records and winning awards on TV, in books, films, and as a language studied at the university level. It hurts to know so many people want to consume our culture and simultaneously wish to be rid of us.
Of course, it doesn’t work that way—our language is inextricable from the fact of our deafness—but they’re trying their best. I hope that these next few months might open a meaningful dialogue across this city, and that ethical considerations might return to the forefront of the medical work that is designed for our eradication. We may be the easy marks in this latest eugenic push, but we won’t be the last.
ASL always looks funny in photos. It’s not meant to be frozen. It’s meant to live.
Photo from WHYY coverage available here.