In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

ix Acknowledgments I have many people and institutions to thank for making this book possible. The project upon which it is based required many visits to the field while I was living in Lincoln, Nebraska, and San Diego, California, so travel and logistics required a great deal of attention. I am grateful to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders at Barkley Center for my home base during the first half of the project. John Bernthal, the department chair while I was at UNL, David Buekelman,Tom Carrell, and especially Malinda Eccarius were grand friends and colleagues in Lincoln. At the University of California, San Diego, colleagues in the Education Studies Program provided friendship and collegial support, especially my colleagues in the doctoral program in Teaching and Learning, Paula Levin, James Levin, and AlisonWishard Guerra. Former director Randy Souviney, and current director Amanda Datnow were also supportive of my work, particularly my regular travel to Mexico City from San Diego.I have the good fortune to countTom Humphries among my Education Studies colleagues. More than once his friendship and advice kept me sane, and his scholarly example helped me avoid obstacles in analysis and writing. My research was supported by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project for which I am grateful. In addition I received support from the UNL Teacher’s College dean’s office and the University of California San Diego Faculty Senate. In Mexico, Antoinette Hawayek introduced me to Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla in 1999, the event that led to the project with the elderly signers from La Escuela Nacional para Sordomudos. In Coyoacan, Antoinette and her late husband, Manuel Ezcurdia QEPD offered elegant hospitality, delicious meals, and wonderful conversations. Benigno Ruiz Quintano and Maria de los Angeles Bedolla opened their home to me many times, x Acknowledgments for visits, for Gela’s fabulous cooking, for explorations through boxes of faded old photos, and for planning the project.Their generosity to a sometimes incomprehensible visiting NorthAmerican was open-hearted and genuine. Benigno’s lifelong friendships and his standing among Deaf people young and old in Mexico City made the project possible. Many, many thanks are due Beni for his invaluable assistance. I will never be able to express my gratitude to Fabiola Ruiz Bedolla for her collegiality, companionship, and friendship over the last 12 years. Fabiola collected all of the interview data, which included traveling through the delegaciones, colonias, and whimsically numbered addresses of Mexico City to locate elderly Deaf people, who were often difficult to find. She also served as my informal LSM teacher and, most importantly, my LSM-Spanish interpreter when I needed to convey information to Mexican signers. Fabiola is the complete defeña. Her brilliant mind, her exceedingly creative vocabulary, and her knowledge of Spanish, LSM, Mexico, and the cultures of Mexico were of course particularly beneficial to me during the project. But her essence as a person, her big heart, her sense of humor, her courage, and her inner spiritual glow are the real gifts she has given to me and to the research reported here.Without her collaboration there would have been no project and no book. Fabiola is my Mexico City neighbor and my beloved friend.There is no one like her anywhere in the world! During the course of this project I acquired a husband, two cats, and two dogs. For keeping the home fires tended and keeping the pets fed, walked, petted, and happy, for taking better care of me than I could ever take of myself, and for unconditional love, I thank Sachi T Wilson. This book is dedicated to my sister Nina S. Ramsey, for many reasons but mostly for inspiring me as a writer. ...

Share