I read You're Welcome, Universe

 This week's novel is You're Welcome, Universe, contemporary YA by Whitney Gardner.

Julia finds a slur about her best friend written on the school wall, and she covers it up with a graffiti mural.  When her best friend snitches, Julia gets kicked out of Kingston School for the Deaf and has to go to a mainstream school, where she is the only Deaf kid.  She tries to get through it by putting up street art by her new school, but soon she finds that someone is adding to her murals, showing her up.

I loved this book.  It's just great.

I liked how being Deaf was a fundamental part of Julia's character.  She talks about how useless music is, and she points out all the micro-aggressions she faces.  Dialogue has words blanked out when she's not able to read people's lips.  She critiques people's Sign Language grammar, and her own written English grammar is so bad/she doesn't try in English class that they put her in an ESL class.  I felt like I was learning something, and after looking at some reviews, it seems to be an accurate portrayal of being Deaf.

At the same time, I felt like I was learning just as much about street art.  She talks about making and using stencils, about picking colors, about picking a place to put up a mural and how she moves quickly and unnoticed.  Her terminology and slang usage make her sound just as much of an expert on art as she is on being Deaf.  And I think that's where the real magic of this book is.  It's not educating me about deafness, it's showing me a person who is an expert in many things that I don't know enough about.  I was excited to read about all the parts of her personality, and in that way her deafness wasn't romanticized, exploitative or turned into a very special episode.

Add to it that Julia was not a model minority.  She held grudges and didn't forgive easily.  She's rude because she worries about making friends.  She's a really well rounded character, and it was fun to spend time with her, even when she was being unreasonable.