“Writing with precision and vulnerability, Reno illuminates an aspect of our lives together that is ubiquitous, yet rarely noticed: the subtle, deeply idiosyncratic ways we make sense to one another beyond and beside the languages some of us type, sign, and speak. He builds on a dizzying array of interlocutors. But at the heart of the book is Reno’s relationship with his sweet-tempered, irascible, mysterious teenage son and the slaps, snaps, caresses, sounds, and silences that make up their shared repertoire of home signs. Setting a new standard for ethical, rigorous scholarship, Home Signs shows us how to move beyond debates over the limits of the human to the places of danger and creativity where sociality lives.”
— Danilyn Rutherford, author of Living in the Stone Age
“In this richly innovative book, Reno delves into the intricacies of communication among alingual children and their families and caretakers, unsettling stubborn assumptions about language, cognitive disability, and human sociality. As with the best of anthropology, Home Signs is ultimately about life and our creative abilities to relate to others.”
— Robert Desjarlais, author of Subject to Death: Life and Loss in a Buddhist World