James McBride’s latest novel, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, includes multiple disabled characters, a rarity in literary fiction. As a deaf reader, I was drawn toward the portrayals of disability, and there is a lot to commend. Chona, though “crippled,” is intelligent, generous, and committed to her community. Chick Webb is a talented musician despite being a “hunchback.” The town doctor and proud Klansman Doc Roberts’s role as town villain adds nuance too; he is educated, a bigot, a doctor, an abuser, and his disability does not negate his humanness, even when that humanity is evil.

Then there’s Dodo, a black, deaf twelve-year-old who lost his hearing in an accident three years before the narrative begins.