#DeafShelf, 2025 Edition
Often when I'm doing a book event, one of the questions I get is about what books by deaf authors people should read next. This is one of my favorite questions, because, yes! Read more deaf authors! But also I dread it a little because my recall for specific titles and author names when I'm on stage is pretty bad!
When True Biz came out in 2022, I wrote this piece on adopting Viet Thanh Nguyen's concept of "narrative plentitude" for deaf writers. From there, friends and I developed the phrase DeafShelf--reminding ourselves and others that a single deaf perspective isn't enough-- we need a whole bookshelf of them.
I started a running, though ever incomplete, list of deaf authors then. Happily three years on, there many new books to add. But in 2025, when the world is melting, it often feels hard to read, at least to me. So instead of trying to be exhaustive, I'm going to list a few personal favorites in each category, including a few newbies.
You can still find the less curated 2022 version here. I also highly recommend the Virginia Library System's Deaf Culture Digital Library as a resource!
ID: the spines of a few books in a pile for the Deaf Shelf, including Continuum, Deaf Utopia, Islay and a several others.
Fiction
Update: the initial version of this list included the novel Islay, by David Bullard. I've learned since that Bullard was convicted by sexual battery and other charges against a minor. So instead, I'd recommend reading this article by deaf scholar Kristen Harmon, about the history of deaf utopia and dystopia, and the problem of utopia as crafted by an abuser.
Deaf Sentence, David Loge: The often funny story of a newly retired academic coming to to terms with late deafness.
The Language of Home (stories) Raymond Luczak: 30 stories featuring a wide range of perspectives about what it means to be home, and communicate with those in it.
Chattering (stories) Louise Stern: A collection highlighting the observations and life experiences primarily of deaf-born girls and women making their way through a hearing world.
Middle Grade + Young Adult
El Deafo, Cece Bell: Probably the most famous deaf book out there, a graphic memoir/novel about growing up deaf and deafness as a superpower in the form of the hero El Deafo.
Show Me A Sign (et al), Ann Clare LeZotte: Four-book historical fiction series inspired by the real-life signing community on Martha's Vineyard.
Deer Run Home, Ann Clare LeZotte: a novel in verse about a language deprived middle schooler's fight to escape her abusive family
Give Me a Sign, Anna Sortino: Romantic romp set at a deaf camp, examining the experience of a deaf kid growing up oral and coming home to ASL. (Bonus fact, the audiobook uses the system we created for True Biz of incorporating the "noise" of ASL beneath the dialogue.)
Poetry Collections
How to Communicate, Jon Lee Clark
Deaf Republic, Ilya Kaminsky
Country of Glass, Sarah Katz
Everything that Hurts us Becomes a Ghost Sage Ravenwood
Nonfiction, Memoir
The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound, Raymond Antrobus: An examination of a poet's life growing up in between worlds as a multiracial deaf person in the UK (I read a galley, but this one's out in August.)
Deaf Utopia, Nyle DiMarco with Bobby Siebert: Memoir and introduction into the basics of deaf culture from reality star-turned- director Nyle Di Marco.
Mean Little Deaf Queer, Terry Galloway: Memoir from a playwright on growing up deaf and queer in the 1960s.
Continuum, Chella Man: Reflections on life, love, and work from an Asian deaf trans artist.
Being Seen, Elsa Sjunneson: smart hybrid of memoir, theory and history from the DeafBlind perspective
Sounds Like Home, Growing up Black and Deaf in the South, Mary Herring Wright: Memoir of the intersectional experience of a Black Deaf woman who attended a segregated school for the deaf in the South.
The Butterfly Cage, Rachel Zemach: this memoir by a deaf teacher of the deaf working in the mainstream reveals the systematic failures of the education system for deaf kids
Nonfiction, Reference
Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking (Collected essays) Ed. H-Dirksen L. Bauman: A Deaf Studies primer from varied perspectives
The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL, Carolyn McCaskill: A summary of Drs. McCaskill and Hill's study of BASL as a distinct dialect grown out of segregation. Chapters translated into ASL, as well as videos from their research, available on YouTube.
Deaf In America: Voices from a Culture, Carol Padden and Tom Humphries: Formative Deaf studies/Deaf culture text.
Hearing Happiness, Jaipreet Virdi: Examines the history of deaf technology
Picture Books
Can Bears Ski? Raymond Antrobus
Monster Hands, Jonaz McMillan
Swishing, Victorica Monroe
Butterfly on the Wind, Adam Pottle
Extraordinary Jordyn, Jasmine Simmons
I Deaf-initely Can, Katie Waldrip
Hearing People Doing a Good Job (Credit where it's due lol)
The Invention of Miracles, Katie Booth (nonfiction) A deep dive into the life of inventor, oralist, and eugenicist Alexander Graham Bell
In This Sign, Joanne Greenberg (novel) Follows a deaf couple and their children up through the Great Depression and into the dawn of the Civil Rights movement with impressive insight into deaf culture and language deprivation, particularly for the time.
Made to Hear, Laura Mauldin (nonfiction) An in-depth examination of families' experiences as the navigate the healthcare and education systems for their deaf children, including the barriers and misinformation they encounter regarding cochlear implants as a curative technology, and the false binary between speech and sign created by those in power.
Hang in there, and order from your favorite indie bookstore ;)