The Boys of Riverside is by journalist Thomas Fuller, a hearing man. Although I prefer to read books about Deaf people by Deaf people, this author admits that he was so fascinated by the Deaf football at the California School for the Deaf-Riverside team that he went on hiatus at work and learned all about them and their culture by following and interviewing the team. Therefore, he went in pretty ignorant like most hearing readers, making his book accessible in all the right ways. He predicts what it is that hearing people don’t know and shares it clearly, putting a Deaf football team today into a larger historical context.

While Fuller’s book is clearly written and engaging, I am not a football person at all. Therefore, I go into this review with full disclosure: I did not finish The Boys of Riverside. However, I read a good deal of the text and appreciated the way Fuller explained what he discovered after interviewing the team, its coaches, the graduates, and the coaches and teams made up of hearing people who played against the Deaf students at Riverside. Fuller makes it clear that being a Deaf athlete on a team sport can have an advantage: “In the article I wrote about the (CSDR) team, I quoted Aaron Williams, the head coach of Desert Christian, the hearing team the Cubs [Deaf school team name] had just defeated. He had a warning for future opponents of the Cubs. ‘I would say be careful in thinking that you have an advantage,’ Williams said. ‘They communicate better than any team I have ever coached against.’ The article, published in The New York Times on Monday after the game, went viral.”

Furthermore, Fuller acknowledges other benefits to being Deaf, such as communicating in challenging situations, like a loud bar, while scuba diving, or working in loud factory environments. Not knowing American Sign Language himself, Fuller asks, “On the campus of a deaf school, who is more disabled, the person who knows American Sign Language and can communicate effortlessly with students and staff? Or the person with perfect hearing who does not know ASL? Deafness, unlike a physical handicap, is essentially a language barrier in the hearing world.” Thankfully, Fuller never condescends the Deaf experience, though he is clear about the limitations. You may be thinking that a limitation is negative, though sometimes it breeds curiosity, such as when “…Keith (a deaf boy) was reading a book that mentioned the wind rustling through the trees. Rustling? What did that mean? He asked his mother. . . . Keith absorbed this knowledge and followed up with another question. ‘What sound does sunshine make?'”

The lack of typical sounds throws off the opposing team that comes to Riverside’s field: “. . . The national anthem was not part of the proceedings, and there was no announcer, nothing auditory except for the constant woosh of cars passing on the nearby freeway, the squealing wheels of the mile-long freight trains that frequently passed on the tracks next to the school, and the diesel generators for the lights.” In the US, it is common to play the national anthem before every sporting event, but why would you if the team cannot hear it? Although the song can be signed in ASL, the proceeding seems to lose its importance in the Deaf school at Riverside, which gives readers an interesting counter-perspective to what it means to be American.

I enjoyed the way Fuller discusses multiple cultures and how they interact among the people involved with this deaf football team. For instance, one deaf coach is from Iran, and he recalls growing up and meeting an American boy who brought an American football with him. “But it’s not round,” the coach recalls thinking, explaining that he and his Iranian friends proceeded to try and kick the American football like a soccer ball.

Had The Boys of Riverside been about a different sport, I likely would have finished it. However, I do encourage readers to check out Fuller’s work of journalism to get a perspective that may be friendlier to hearing folks who don’t know Deaf culture or ASL because Fuller himself is going in without any knowledge. Therefore, he knows what to cover for readers who also have no knowledge of Deaf people. Afterward, check out No Excuses: Growing Up Deaf and Achieving My Super Bowl Dreams by Derrick Coleman Jr., an NFL player.