In This Sign

by Joanne Greenberg

Book Overview

From the award-winning author of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Joanne Greenberg presents a poignant novel of family whose love and courage enable them to survive in the silent world of the deaf.

Abel and Janice Ryder began their married life together with all the hopes and dreams of a young couple deeply in love. But before long they realize that their deafness stands as an immense barrier between them and a society that...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805007229
• ISBN13: 9780805007220
• Release Date: September 1984
• Publisher: Holt McDougal
• Length: 275 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Deaf Life

I am a Sign Language interpreter. I am with deaf people every day. This book is a wonderful, accurate account of how many deaf people feel about the hearing world. Hearing people will never be able to understand how frustrating a deaf person's life often is. It is hard to have to go through an interpreter for all your business and often private transactions. This book beautifully told the story from both sides, and I highly recommend it to anyone. Thank you. Marsha Binau

In This Sign

We all have signs, in spoken language, in the way we behave, in the way we act..... And the signs are important to understand ourselves and to understand others.In this book Joanne Greenberg tells the story of a deaf couple and their hearing daughter. The story is so sad, I have cried alot, and at the same time I learn so much from the book. Janice and Abel are both deaf and because of a misunderstanding early in their married life, a misunderstanding because they are unable to hear, their lives make a tragic turn. This change their lives dramaticaly, and takes away most of the beauty. Their daughter can hear, and becomes the link for Janice and Abel to the world of hearers, a world they don't understand and don't trust.This is the story about Janice and Abel who live in their own world. A world of signs. Signs they are ashamed to show. They are quite young when they leave deaf school to marry, and the book is a heartbreaking story of their fight for their lives in the hearing world.A book you will learn alot from, a book you can't put down once you have started.Britt Arnhild Lindland

Can a true portrayal of life keep you reading? Yes!

This book has a strange impact on the soul. It's a story thatmight be described as about deafness, since it's the story of deafcouple, their hearing daughter, and their struggles through life. And yet the comment I hear most frequently about this book--from old and young, women and men, those who can hear and those who can't--is this: "I could relate." It was the same way with me. As I read this book I kept thinking..."that's like my family--thats like MY parents--that's like me." This book isn't JUST about deafness...it's about what separates us, about the walls we put up around ourselves and how to break them down. The characters aren't heroic and they aren't extraordinary. They live, go to work, go to school, cry, laugh, have children, make and lose friends...and you can't put their story down because it's too much like yours. I never wanted to read about life, just life, until I saw it so well portrayed.