"The best that can be said for deafness is that it's an invisible handicap. The worst, that it puts adults at the mercy of their hearing children, at the mercy of parents, at almost anyone's mercy. It is one of the cruelest and most deceptive of afflictions." Prologue, p. 2

"To the hearing world the deaf community must seem like a secret society. Indeed, deafness is a culture every bit as distinctive as any an anthropologist might study." Chap. 2, p. 22

"For centuries there have been two distinct attitudes about how deaf people should be taught: The oralists believe in speaking and lipreading without ever signing; and the manualists are pro-signing in American Sign Language (ASL)." Chap. 3, pp. 28-29

"In some hands, signing is an art equal to an actor's rendering of Shakespeare. It is not just swoops and swirls but an enormous variety of expression, just as a great...