racbuckallew's review
hopeful
informative
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Mass/school shootings, and Racism
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail
chyreads29's review against another edition
3.0
There were quite a lot of social issues tackled here. Too many in my opinion. And the way the issues were presented, sometimes like literal lessons out of a history book, was frustrating. Readers, no matter the age, have got to be responsible for doing some work. That was largely missing. Also, the antagonist is just an evil caricature, which means the root of gun violence and racism is left uncovered. It all feels very surface-level.
It's in the blurb, and it was very obvious it was coming, but the ending hit me harder than I expected and I sobbed. As an educator who works with high schoolers, I was emotionally spent by the close of the book. It is a lot to take in and can be triggering. Please consult content warnings.
I did enjoy how Avila wrote about Brujeria and ancestral magic. And I liked the many moments where we could see Yolanda being a normal teenager: sharing a close bond with her grandmother, bickering with her best friend, falling in love for the first time, connecting with her culture, trying to build a bridge between her estranged parents, leading a brave space club at her school. And there was so much care put into the teacher characters (Avila was a k-12 teacher for a decade!). Very humanizing and validating. Those aspects of the book were really heartwarming.
It's in the blurb, and it was very obvious it was coming, but the ending hit me harder than I expected and I sobbed. As an educator who works with high schoolers, I was emotionally spent by the close of the book. It is a lot to take in and can be triggering. Please consult content warnings.
I did enjoy how Avila wrote about Brujeria and ancestral magic. And I liked the many moments where we could see Yolanda being a normal teenager: sharing a close bond with her grandmother, bickering with her best friend, falling in love for the first time, connecting with her culture, trying to build a bridge between her estranged parents, leading a brave space club at her school. And there was so much care put into the teacher characters (Avila was a k-12 teacher for a decade!). Very humanizing and validating. Those aspects of the book were really heartwarming.
leigh_ann_15_deaf's review
3.0
The only reason this got a 3 is because I did find the story meaningful—aside from the atrocious deaf rep that made reading this a horrible chore. Yolanda is clearly a hearing character who has been given a cochlear implant (CI) as an eye-catching accessory, not as an actual attempt to provide authentic representation.
First, a note on the cover art: The CI looks like it was improperly placed, which does happen occasionally, but it looks off compared to the more traditional placements. This CI is right above the ear instead of further back, as most are. I’m sure the artist made this decision to make it more visible, but it does look extremely uncomfortable compared to the usual placement. However, learning that the CI was only added later reinforces for me that the character was originally hearing and didn’t become “deaf” until much later. If deafness was a core aspect of Yolanda’s character from the beginning, the artist would have been asked to include the CI from the beginning.
Now, for the character herself. Virtually nothing about this representation is accurate to the deaf experience.
While some deaf readers may appreciate the attempt to include a CI-using character, only an extreme minority may be able to relate to how the CIs and Yolanda’s hearing abilities are portrayed. Yolanda, with the CIs, is a hearing person. What’s the point of having a deaf character if their magical cure-all tech means their deafness has zero impact on the way the character behaves or interacts with the world? It bothers me that Avila is using the CI as an accessory. But a CI is not like a rainbow pin to show LGBTQIA+-ness or allyship that can be put on or taken off without any real effect on the individual. There just doesn’t seem to be any reality to using them.
Yolanda does not experience the world as a deaf individual, just as a hearing person who has to use a particular device to become hearing. If we took away the deafness and CIs, nothing about the story or Yolanda would change at all. In Avila’s Goodreads review, she doesn’t mention deafness as part of her or Yolanda's identity, which only underscores for me that the CIs are used as more of a unique selling point than for authentic rep. Sometimes Avila has Yolanda say or think things about the CIs or about deafness that don’t really make sense. It all comes across as an outsider plopping in some phrases that real deaf individuals use once in a while, without fully understanding what it means. I don’t see any mention of a prelingual CI-using sensitivity reader for this book.
Yolanda is a bilateral (both ears) CI user. She typically hides processors behind her afro, but sometimes doesn’t, and resents being known as “pretty smart and basically deaf girl.” But she does not say what she would rather be known as. It’s clear that she’s a student leader and fairly popular, and no one interacts with her as though she were deaf.
Yolanda seems to be one of those whose hearing is exceptional—practically fully hearing. She can hear warmth and sarcasm in someone’s voice (rare for CI users, since the implants can’t code subtle changes like that), and apparently has no difficulty understanding speech, even whispered, whether it’s English or Spanish. She can hear keys jingling and shoes squeaking, long nails typing on a keyboard in the other room; she can hear and understand music, recognizing most of them immediately. She never streams music through her CIs, which most newer models are capable of (we don't know which model/brand she wears). She does note that too much noise/cacophony overwhelms the processor and hurts her head. But this is true of hearing people, too.
Yolanda has had the CIs for most of her life. She mentions her parents worked hard to get them, which is entirely fair. As a toddler, she considered them her magic ears and didn’t like to take them off. She started taking them off when her parents argued. But, with this background, it doesn’t really make sense to me that she can understand all speech. Deaf people who get prelingual CIs almost never understand all speech (the best are usually around 90% comprehension in ideal conditions--and conditions are almost never ideal), and those who do use CIs highly effectively are most often from affluent white families who could afford years of intensive (one or more hours, five days a week) and often private speech therapy (especially Auditory Verbal Therapy, meaning no speechreading or signing is allowed during sessions), updated processors, etc. Yolanda is explicitly from an overexploited, low socioeconomic community, and repeatedly mentions how much her family sacrifices in order to provide for her and transport her places, etc. Even with all that sacrifice, deaf people from such backgrounds rarely benefit as much from their CIs as those who have the resources to support them. [1] Auditory Verbal Therapy deeply involves family in facilitating listening and spoken language production in children, so Yolanda could just be one of those lucky people to whom it comes easily and who has a great familial support system, but this certainly doesn’t represent the average CI user’s experiences.
At age 5, Yolanda, who had been placed in a mainstream Spanish-speaking class, started teaching her peer Victory Spanish, and Victory taught her English—each their mother tongues. This suggests that Yolanda only learned Spanish. It’s my understanding she was born and raised in the US, which means that her speech and language pathologist, audiologist, etc., (i.e., her auditory and speech habilitation service providers) would all be English speakers who would be working with her in English…So how could she not have already been speaking English?
The vast majority of US doctors and audiologists and SLPs encourage that a deaf child with a CI is exposed to only one language: English. [2] If Yolanda only grew up with Spanish, that means she likely didn’t have much training or follow-up appointments throughout her childhood to ensure her linguistic progress and check whether the CIs needed remapping, access to other children or adults with CIs, etc. Maybe her family ignored the so-called professionals’ advice to only speak English, but the SLPs (mainstream schools usually employ at least itinerant speech pathologists to work with students weekly, whether they are deaf or have a stutter, etc.) would most likely have been monolingual English-speakers.
It also means that for Yolanda to primarily speak Spanish, her family would have had to train her in understanding the sounds she hears with her CIs, which I doubt they would have any expertise in. Just talking to a child with a CI isn’t enough. They need real language support, often involving years of training in order to make sense of what they are perceiving, as well as speech therapy to make sure they are reproducing speech correctly. She would most likely not be learning to speak English from a peer, and unless the teacher(s) at her school were also trained teachers of the deaf, it is not likely she would have had appropriate support in English-learning from them, either. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Which specialists were supporting and facilitating this deaf child’s spoken language acquisition, whether in Spanish or in English, pre- and post-implantation?
Speedrunning some weird/incorrect things:
-She can speechread 100% of Mamá Teté’s speech without the CIs. When she’s suspended, she stops wearing her CIs and shuts herself in her room. Her father leaves notes instead of texting or making her speechread. She yells without her CIs on and doesn’t know (or care) how loud she is. Her dad brings her the CIs and holds them out to her until she relents and puts them on. All this is fine. But, given Yolanda's skills, I wondered why are they not making her speechread, if she’s proven to be 100% successful at this in the past? I guessed that she exclusively speechreads Mamá, since she grew up with her. But nope—at the end she speechreads Papi with no problem, too, even though she's only had brief face-to-face conversations with him for at least several years.
-She puts her CIs on and then gets into the shower…She probably had a shower cap but still, why? Later, when showering and taking a bitter bath, there’s again no mention of removing her CIs. Maybe the author is relying on the reader’s common sense? It’s just odd to me.
-“Sometimes I be thinking this deafness is a gift from my ancestors, from the Bruja Diosas. I don’t have clarity of hearing, and that allows me to cut down on the things I don’t want to be a part of, so I can focus on my power and what I am being shown.” Huh? But if she’s totally hearing with the CIs, as she’s been presented and as she behaves and responds, then what does not having “clarity of hearing” mean? From the fact she’s able to eavesdrops on a conversation in the principal’s office when the door is ajar, and that she goes to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth and still overhears the argument her parents have in her room, Yolanda doesn’t need to supplement her hearing with speechreading at all.
-“He calls me at 10 p.m., when I am half asleep, but I pick up anyway.” So she’s wearing her CIs to bed instead of having put them in the bathroom medicine cabinet, where they were the first morning of the novel she put them on? During the conversation she tucks her hair behind her ears…suggesting she’s not wearing the CIs because she doesn’t have to adjust them.
-Mamá wakes her by rubbing her back. Does she not have a vibrating alarm clock?
-The sounds of the early world vibrate through her body (I’m assuming the train, but there would not be much else to vibrate an entire apartment, aside from the music Mamá is mentioned to be playing once). There is a reason even though CIs are often advertised as a “miracle cure” or a “gift of hearing” that they don’t tout music—because CIs are notorious for not processing music well. “Out of five musical elements evaluated (pitch, rhythm, timbre, sound quality and dynamics), only rhythm was still clear to CI users. Music tends to sound out of tune, the dynamic range (how loud or soft the music is) is limited and the general sound quality is poor.” [3]
-Despite a proven ability to hear 100% of everything with CIs on, Yolanda pretends not to hear someone speaking to her. Sure. Yolanda wants silence, to sit with someone without having to speak…So why not remove the CIs? Deaf gain, baby.
-Adrenaline makes her sense of hearing shut off. Not physically possible because adrenaline deprives the cilia of oxygen, which causes the tinnitus or deafness that hearing people experience. The CIs bypass these cilia entirely, so her hearing wouldn’t be affected. (Admittedly, this is a nitpick, but just an FYI.)
-She passes through a metal detector without setting it off, without hearing a distorted sound, or her CIs shutting off for a moment. While it's possible that the detector had no effect on her CIs, it is something that can happen. Every time I travel with a friend who has CIs, she gets pulled aside by the TSA because her implants set off the machine and she has told me that her CIs glitch when she goes through it.
-When having her hair pulled and struggling against Ben, getting thrown around, the CIs remain firmly attached. Meanwhile, many deaf athletes have to wear headgear to keep their CIs from flying away.
-“The words blow in my ear…” So, not the mic?
-“Because I still have to wear these things to listen…” Um, “still”? As in temporarily until a “real cure” or something comes along? Or until you learn a new way to listen, such as signed language? What?
-At end of the novel, Yolanda mentions having been kicked out of class for yelling at teachers who don’t speak clearly enough for her to understand—and yet she can eavesdrops on private conversations behind doors, hear people arguing rooms away, and understand a televised broadcast from the other room, etc. What made her more realistic inability to understand everything suddenly change? (The answer is nothing, because it’s simply not possible to go from deaf or hard of hearing to fully hearing once you stand up for your right to communication access.)
-I’m actually shocked the author mentions an “accommodation plan” — that is, an IEP. It just mandates that she is kept in areas where she can “hear things clearly,” but given that she can hear everything regardless of the area, it’s functionally useless to her to even have an IEP. In reality, a student with a CI would mostly likely have an IEP that mandated teachers use an FM system, in addition to (or instead of) forcing her to sit in a specific seat, which is often not helpful anyway since teachers often lecture while moving around the room.
Anyway. Yolanda mentions that she charges the CIs. Bonus point! Many authors neglect to have their deaf characters take care of their assistive tech. Too bad this isn't consistent, which is made especially clear to me during the hospital scene.
There's no mention of her CIs at all when she's in hospital, but she clearly has no difficulty communicating with anyone. Yolanda mentions everyone wearing blue masks, but then nostrils flaring and lips pursing—so, no masks? But the doctor gives Yolanda a mask to wear to visit Jay…Is the doc wearing a mask herself or not? If Yolanda had her CIs at the hospital, someone would have needed to bring her charger and keep them charged, and slap them onto her head as soon as her eyelids started fluttering in order for her to just immediately be able to hear upon waking—unless she was speechreading, in which case, how with the masks that were mentioned?
Okay, so after the funeral, Yolanda, José, and Victory join the protest march. Presumably, everyone is masked up, due to C19. Yolanda also explicitly mentions that there is a cacophony—chants, blaring hip hop, the train roaring nearby, laughter. They are ushered into the middle of the crowd, so Yolanda is totally surrounded by all this, no? But she is able to fully understand someone speaking to her, telling her what’s coming up in the march and asking her if she would like to participate in the poetry readings. Come on.
Yolanda stops wearing the CIs at home, so she doesn’t get the everyday ambience of trains, neighbors, and “conversations through the walls”—again showing how magical these devices are that she can actually perceive conversations like that.
Yolanda also wears her CIs on the plane, apparently for the duration of the flight. She leans back and closes her eyes, apparently to take a nap. She can’t just be speechreading her grandmother because she hears the pilot’s announcement, word for word, that they will be landing soon. Some people can fall asleep with CIs on, but not all. Yolanda occasionally falling asleep *while traveling* or just drowsing off once in a while with hers still on is realistic, so that is fine. But CI-users don’t typically keep them on overnight, unless they have a reason to (like a new parent wanting to be alert for a baby’s cry). (I'm remembering her 10pm conversation with José.)
But oftentimes it’s less about falling asleep with them in than there is just no mention of the CIs, and Yolanda behaves like a hearing person with or without them. This is another case where the character was probably hearing in the first draft and became deaf in a later draft, with the author peppering in references to deafness without doing the work to represent the deaf experience. And of course missing places where the CIs and deafness would impact her actions/ability to communicate.
Dealing with racism and colorism are strong themes throughout the book, which is great, but there’s no reckoning with ableism, even though it affects WOC most severely. I’m less upset on this point because Avila herself is not deaf, and she is not telling a deaf story (about a deaf character’s journey of deafness). I just would have really appreciated some realism in respect to the deafness.
Sources:
[1] Raylene Paludneviciene & Rachelle L. Harris, “Impact of Cochlear Implants on the Deaf Community.” In Cochlear Implants: Evolving Perspectives, edited by Raylene Paludneviciene & Irene W. Leigh. Gallaudet University Press, 2011.
[2] Natalie Jenny Delgado Palacios's 2020 dissertation, "Mis aspiraciones para mis hijos: Latina Immigrant Mothers’ Experiences of Early Intervention with Their Deaf Children," goes into this for Spanish-speaking families with deaf children.
[3] Amber Snyder, "THE SOUND OF MUSIC: Making Music Enjoyable for Cochlear Implant Users." NIH Record, July 8, 2022, Vol. LXXIV, No. 14.
Deaf reader reviewing books with deaf characters. This book is listed on my ranked list of books with deaf characters: https://slacowan.com/2023/01/14/ranked-deaf-characters-in-fiction.
First, a note on the cover art: The CI looks like it was improperly placed, which does happen occasionally, but it looks off compared to the more traditional placements. This CI is right above the ear instead of further back, as most are. I’m sure the artist made this decision to make it more visible, but it does look extremely uncomfortable compared to the usual placement. However, learning that the CI was only added later reinforces for me that the character was originally hearing and didn’t become “deaf” until much later. If deafness was a core aspect of Yolanda’s character from the beginning, the artist would have been asked to include the CI from the beginning.
Now, for the character herself. Virtually nothing about this representation is accurate to the deaf experience.
While some deaf readers may appreciate the attempt to include a CI-using character, only an extreme minority may be able to relate to how the CIs and Yolanda’s hearing abilities are portrayed. Yolanda, with the CIs, is a hearing person. What’s the point of having a deaf character if their magical cure-all tech means their deafness has zero impact on the way the character behaves or interacts with the world? It bothers me that Avila is using the CI as an accessory. But a CI is not like a rainbow pin to show LGBTQIA+-ness or allyship that can be put on or taken off without any real effect on the individual. There just doesn’t seem to be any reality to using them.
Yolanda does not experience the world as a deaf individual, just as a hearing person who has to use a particular device to become hearing. If we took away the deafness and CIs, nothing about the story or Yolanda would change at all. In Avila’s Goodreads review, she doesn’t mention deafness as part of her or Yolanda's identity, which only underscores for me that the CIs are used as more of a unique selling point than for authentic rep. Sometimes Avila has Yolanda say or think things about the CIs or about deafness that don’t really make sense. It all comes across as an outsider plopping in some phrases that real deaf individuals use once in a while, without fully understanding what it means. I don’t see any mention of a prelingual CI-using sensitivity reader for this book.
Yolanda is a bilateral (both ears) CI user. She typically hides processors behind her afro, but sometimes doesn’t, and resents being known as “pretty smart and basically deaf girl.” But she does not say what she would rather be known as. It’s clear that she’s a student leader and fairly popular, and no one interacts with her as though she were deaf.
Yolanda seems to be one of those whose hearing is exceptional—practically fully hearing. She can hear warmth and sarcasm in someone’s voice (rare for CI users, since the implants can’t code subtle changes like that), and apparently has no difficulty understanding speech, even whispered, whether it’s English or Spanish. She can hear keys jingling and shoes squeaking, long nails typing on a keyboard in the other room; she can hear and understand music, recognizing most of them immediately. She never streams music through her CIs, which most newer models are capable of (we don't know which model/brand she wears). She does note that too much noise/cacophony overwhelms the processor and hurts her head. But this is true of hearing people, too.
Yolanda has had the CIs for most of her life. She mentions her parents worked hard to get them, which is entirely fair. As a toddler, she considered them her magic ears and didn’t like to take them off. She started taking them off when her parents argued. But, with this background, it doesn’t really make sense to me that she can understand all speech. Deaf people who get prelingual CIs almost never understand all speech (the best are usually around 90% comprehension in ideal conditions--and conditions are almost never ideal), and those who do use CIs highly effectively are most often from affluent white families who could afford years of intensive (one or more hours, five days a week) and often private speech therapy (especially Auditory Verbal Therapy, meaning no speechreading or signing is allowed during sessions), updated processors, etc. Yolanda is explicitly from an overexploited, low socioeconomic community, and repeatedly mentions how much her family sacrifices in order to provide for her and transport her places, etc. Even with all that sacrifice, deaf people from such backgrounds rarely benefit as much from their CIs as those who have the resources to support them. [1] Auditory Verbal Therapy deeply involves family in facilitating listening and spoken language production in children, so Yolanda could just be one of those lucky people to whom it comes easily and who has a great familial support system, but this certainly doesn’t represent the average CI user’s experiences.
At age 5, Yolanda, who had been placed in a mainstream Spanish-speaking class, started teaching her peer Victory Spanish, and Victory taught her English—each their mother tongues. This suggests that Yolanda only learned Spanish. It’s my understanding she was born and raised in the US, which means that her speech and language pathologist, audiologist, etc., (i.e., her auditory and speech habilitation service providers) would all be English speakers who would be working with her in English…So how could she not have already been speaking English?
The vast majority of US doctors and audiologists and SLPs encourage that a deaf child with a CI is exposed to only one language: English. [2] If Yolanda only grew up with Spanish, that means she likely didn’t have much training or follow-up appointments throughout her childhood to ensure her linguistic progress and check whether the CIs needed remapping, access to other children or adults with CIs, etc. Maybe her family ignored the so-called professionals’ advice to only speak English, but the SLPs (mainstream schools usually employ at least itinerant speech pathologists to work with students weekly, whether they are deaf or have a stutter, etc.) would most likely have been monolingual English-speakers.
It also means that for Yolanda to primarily speak Spanish, her family would have had to train her in understanding the sounds she hears with her CIs, which I doubt they would have any expertise in. Just talking to a child with a CI isn’t enough. They need real language support, often involving years of training in order to make sense of what they are perceiving, as well as speech therapy to make sure they are reproducing speech correctly. She would most likely not be learning to speak English from a peer, and unless the teacher(s) at her school were also trained teachers of the deaf, it is not likely she would have had appropriate support in English-learning from them, either. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Which specialists were supporting and facilitating this deaf child’s spoken language acquisition, whether in Spanish or in English, pre- and post-implantation?
Speedrunning some weird/incorrect things:
-She can speechread 100% of Mamá Teté’s speech without the CIs. When she’s suspended, she stops wearing her CIs and shuts herself in her room. Her father leaves notes instead of texting or making her speechread. She yells without her CIs on and doesn’t know (or care) how loud she is. Her dad brings her the CIs and holds them out to her until she relents and puts them on. All this is fine. But, given Yolanda's skills, I wondered why are they not making her speechread, if she’s proven to be 100% successful at this in the past? I guessed that she exclusively speechreads Mamá, since she grew up with her. But nope—at the end she speechreads Papi with no problem, too, even though she's only had brief face-to-face conversations with him for at least several years.
-She puts her CIs on and then gets into the shower…She probably had a shower cap but still, why? Later, when showering and taking a bitter bath, there’s again no mention of removing her CIs. Maybe the author is relying on the reader’s common sense? It’s just odd to me.
-“Sometimes I be thinking this deafness is a gift from my ancestors, from the Bruja Diosas. I don’t have clarity of hearing, and that allows me to cut down on the things I don’t want to be a part of, so I can focus on my power and what I am being shown.” Huh? But if she’s totally hearing with the CIs, as she’s been presented and as she behaves and responds, then what does not having “clarity of hearing” mean? From the fact she’s able to eavesdrops on a conversation in the principal’s office when the door is ajar, and that she goes to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth and still overhears the argument her parents have in her room, Yolanda doesn’t need to supplement her hearing with speechreading at all.
-“He calls me at 10 p.m., when I am half asleep, but I pick up anyway.” So she’s wearing her CIs to bed instead of having put them in the bathroom medicine cabinet, where they were the first morning of the novel she put them on? During the conversation she tucks her hair behind her ears…suggesting she’s not wearing the CIs because she doesn’t have to adjust them.
-Mamá wakes her by rubbing her back. Does she not have a vibrating alarm clock?
-The sounds of the early world vibrate through her body (I’m assuming the train, but there would not be much else to vibrate an entire apartment, aside from the music Mamá is mentioned to be playing once). There is a reason even though CIs are often advertised as a “miracle cure” or a “gift of hearing” that they don’t tout music—because CIs are notorious for not processing music well. “Out of five musical elements evaluated (pitch, rhythm, timbre, sound quality and dynamics), only rhythm was still clear to CI users. Music tends to sound out of tune, the dynamic range (how loud or soft the music is) is limited and the general sound quality is poor.” [3]
-Despite a proven ability to hear 100% of everything with CIs on, Yolanda pretends not to hear someone speaking to her. Sure. Yolanda wants silence, to sit with someone without having to speak…So why not remove the CIs? Deaf gain, baby.
-Adrenaline makes her sense of hearing shut off. Not physically possible because adrenaline deprives the cilia of oxygen, which causes the tinnitus or deafness that hearing people experience. The CIs bypass these cilia entirely, so her hearing wouldn’t be affected. (Admittedly, this is a nitpick, but just an FYI.)
-She passes through a metal detector without setting it off, without hearing a distorted sound, or her CIs shutting off for a moment. While it's possible that the detector had no effect on her CIs, it is something that can happen. Every time I travel with a friend who has CIs, she gets pulled aside by the TSA because her implants set off the machine and she has told me that her CIs glitch when she goes through it.
-When having her hair pulled and struggling against Ben, getting thrown around, the CIs remain firmly attached. Meanwhile, many deaf athletes have to wear headgear to keep their CIs from flying away.
-“The words blow in my ear…” So, not the mic?
-“Because I still have to wear these things to listen…” Um, “still”? As in temporarily until a “real cure” or something comes along? Or until you learn a new way to listen, such as signed language? What?
-At end of the novel, Yolanda mentions having been kicked out of class for yelling at teachers who don’t speak clearly enough for her to understand—and yet she can eavesdrops on private conversations behind doors, hear people arguing rooms away, and understand a televised broadcast from the other room, etc. What made her more realistic inability to understand everything suddenly change? (The answer is nothing, because it’s simply not possible to go from deaf or hard of hearing to fully hearing once you stand up for your right to communication access.)
-I’m actually shocked the author mentions an “accommodation plan” — that is, an IEP. It just mandates that she is kept in areas where she can “hear things clearly,” but given that she can hear everything regardless of the area, it’s functionally useless to her to even have an IEP. In reality, a student with a CI would mostly likely have an IEP that mandated teachers use an FM system, in addition to (or instead of) forcing her to sit in a specific seat, which is often not helpful anyway since teachers often lecture while moving around the room.
Anyway. Yolanda mentions that she charges the CIs. Bonus point! Many authors neglect to have their deaf characters take care of their assistive tech. Too bad this isn't consistent, which is made especially clear to me during the hospital scene.
There's no mention of her CIs at all when she's in hospital, but she clearly has no difficulty communicating with anyone. Yolanda mentions everyone wearing blue masks, but then nostrils flaring and lips pursing—so, no masks? But the doctor gives Yolanda a mask to wear to visit Jay…Is the doc wearing a mask herself or not? If Yolanda had her CIs at the hospital, someone would have needed to bring her charger and keep them charged, and slap them onto her head as soon as her eyelids started fluttering in order for her to just immediately be able to hear upon waking—unless she was speechreading, in which case, how with the masks that were mentioned?
Okay, so after the funeral, Yolanda, José, and Victory join the protest march. Presumably, everyone is masked up, due to C19. Yolanda also explicitly mentions that there is a cacophony—chants, blaring hip hop, the train roaring nearby, laughter. They are ushered into the middle of the crowd, so Yolanda is totally surrounded by all this, no? But she is able to fully understand someone speaking to her, telling her what’s coming up in the march and asking her if she would like to participate in the poetry readings. Come on.
Yolanda stops wearing the CIs at home, so she doesn’t get the everyday ambience of trains, neighbors, and “conversations through the walls”—again showing how magical these devices are that she can actually perceive conversations like that.
Yolanda also wears her CIs on the plane, apparently for the duration of the flight. She leans back and closes her eyes, apparently to take a nap. She can’t just be speechreading her grandmother because she hears the pilot’s announcement, word for word, that they will be landing soon. Some people can fall asleep with CIs on, but not all. Yolanda occasionally falling asleep *while traveling* or just drowsing off once in a while with hers still on is realistic, so that is fine. But CI-users don’t typically keep them on overnight, unless they have a reason to (like a new parent wanting to be alert for a baby’s cry). (I'm remembering her 10pm conversation with José.)
But oftentimes it’s less about falling asleep with them in than there is just no mention of the CIs, and Yolanda behaves like a hearing person with or without them. This is another case where the character was probably hearing in the first draft and became deaf in a later draft, with the author peppering in references to deafness without doing the work to represent the deaf experience. And of course missing places where the CIs and deafness would impact her actions/ability to communicate.
Dealing with racism and colorism are strong themes throughout the book, which is great, but there’s no reckoning with ableism, even though it affects WOC most severely. I’m less upset on this point because Avila herself is not deaf, and she is not telling a deaf story (about a deaf character’s journey of deafness). I just would have really appreciated some realism in respect to the deafness.
Sources:
[1] Raylene Paludneviciene & Rachelle L. Harris, “Impact of Cochlear Implants on the Deaf Community.” In Cochlear Implants: Evolving Perspectives, edited by Raylene Paludneviciene & Irene W. Leigh. Gallaudet University Press, 2011.
[2] Natalie Jenny Delgado Palacios's 2020 dissertation, "Mis aspiraciones para mis hijos: Latina Immigrant Mothers’ Experiences of Early Intervention with Their Deaf Children," goes into this for Spanish-speaking families with deaf children.
[3] Amber Snyder, "THE SOUND OF MUSIC: Making Music Enjoyable for Cochlear Implant Users." NIH Record, July 8, 2022, Vol. LXXIV, No. 14.
Deaf reader reviewing books with deaf characters. This book is listed on my ranked list of books with deaf characters: https://slacowan.com/2023/01/14/ranked-deaf-characters-in-fiction.
tuma's review
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Overall, a great book!
Representation: Dominican American, Bronxites, Deafness
Explores a LOT of themes - education, mental health, incarceration/prison, school shooting, racism, grief/loss, spirituality/brujaria, politics, protest, Covid-19. (It was ALMOST tooo many things thrown into one novel, some things mentioned only in passing.) But the characters were dynamic and real. I loved Yolanda so much, despite all her flaws. Actually, made her even more lovable. Her best friend, boyfriend, dad, mom, grandma -- all of them were awesome. Recommend this for most people who enjoy contemporary YA and for teens and educators. Even though it drags a bit in some places, still worth it.
Disclaimer: I read a physical uncorrected arc. Maybe final version has some edits.
Representation: Dominican American, Bronxites, Deafness
Explores a LOT of themes - education, mental health, incarceration/prison, school shooting, racism, grief/loss, spirituality/brujaria, politics, protest, Covid-19. (It was ALMOST tooo many things thrown into one novel, some things mentioned only in passing.) But the characters were dynamic and real. I loved Yolanda so much, despite all her flaws. Actually, made her even more lovable. Her best friend, boyfriend, dad, mom, grandma -- all of them were awesome. Recommend this for most people who enjoy contemporary YA and for teens and educators. Even though it drags a bit in some places, still worth it.
Disclaimer: I read a physical uncorrected arc. Maybe final version has some edits.
clarissaruthless's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Timely and powerful, and overall a great debut. Occasionally the phrasing seemed a little rough and took me out of it, but the story itself is wonderful. The beliefs and practices observed by Yolanda and her family are treated with respect and reverence. The characters are well developed, their relationships ring true, and the setting comes alive.
Spoiler
I could have done without the inclusion of COVID towards the end - it didn't seem to really affect the plot line and felt like it had been added last minute. The discussion of white supremacy and school shootings is difficult and may hit too close to home for some readers, but it's important to address these issues, especially now, especially with a YA audience who are all too familiar with the threats.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gun violence, Death, Pandemic/Epidemic, Racism, Violence, and Hate crime
Moderate: Xenophobia
kaitiekait05's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
betweentheshelves's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
There is a lot that happens in this book, that's packed with a lot of relevant social topics that are worth exploring! At times, though, it felt like a little too much and that the story went on for a little longer than it needed to. I was also a bit thrown off by the incorporation of COVID at the end, and I do wish there would have been a little more warning about that becuase I still think it's too soon.
But I digress! The premise of this book is lovely, even if it wasn't quite as fantasy-esque as I expected. The topics are hard hitting, and it is overall well-written; a different editor might have taken out some of the more unncessary plotlines.
All in all, I really wanted to like this one more than I actually did. But this will definitely be an author to watch in the future!
But I digress! The premise of this book is lovely, even if it wasn't quite as fantasy-esque as I expected. The topics are hard hitting, and it is overall well-written; a different editor might have taken out some of the more unncessary plotlines.
All in all, I really wanted to like this one more than I actually did. But this will definitely be an author to watch in the future!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mass/school shootings, Gun violence, and Racism
Moderate: Death, Grief, and Violence
Minor: Pandemic/Epidemic
galliexyc's review
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
mistermipsy's review
challenging
dark
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
This took me a long time to get through, not because it was boring or dragged or anything like that, but just because it was so heavy and sad. I think for the right person in the right headspace, this could be a really powerful book. It was too dark for me personally, but I still did finish it even though I'm definitely the kind of reader that has no problem dropping books I'm not interested in. Had to know how it all played out.. Highlights for me were the magical elements and the mcs relationships with her best friend and family, as well as with her teachers. I wasn't crazy about the romance (although to be fair I never am) bc the guy just seemed completely unrealistically good, but maybe it's a good thing to be giving girls a fictional boy who sets some high bars instead of yet another one of the abusive, immortal/paranormal old man trapped in a teen body, tortured soul kinda love interests that abound in ya fiction....
lettuce_read's review against another edition
emotional
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief, Racism, Gun violence, and Mass/school shootings
Moderate: Pandemic/Epidemic