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Although it is commonly believed that deafness and disability limits a person in a variety of ways, Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India describes the two as a source of value in postcolonial India. Michele Friedner argues that the experiences of deaf people offer an important portrayal of contemporary self-making and sociality under new regimes of labor and economy in India. 

 

Friedner contends that deafness actually becomes a source of value for deaf Indians as they interact with nongovernmental organizations, with employers in the global information technology sector, and with the state. In contrast to previous political economic moments, deaf Indians increasingly depend less on the state for education and employment, and instead turn to novel and sometimes surprising spaces such as NGOs, multinational corporations, multilevel marketing businesses, and churches that attract deaf congregants. They also gravitate towards each other. Their social practices may be invisible to outsiders because neither the state nor their families have recognized Indian Sign Language as legitimate, but deaf Indians collectively learn sign language, which they use among themselves, and they also learn the importance of working within the structures of their communities to maximize their opportunities.  

 

Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India analyzes how diverse deaf people become oriented toward each other and disoriented from their families and other kinship networks. More broadly, this book explores how deafness, deaf sociality, and sign language relate to contemporary society. 

 

 

Raija Nieminen, a deaf woman from Finland, had been leading a very full life as both a librarian and mother of two children. Then her husband Jukka won an exciting new job designing the harbor in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Raija suddenly needed to start her life over again in a small, hot, developing country where both the hearing and deaf populations used languages foreign to her.

 

     Voyage to the Island recounts the remarkable story of how she adjusted to a strange, exotic island, first by seeking out other deaf persons and learning their sign language. Later, she met Alfonso, a deaf child and an orphan, and realized that he was only one of many deaf children who needed her help. Soon, Raija was teaching at the island’s school for the deaf.

 

     Her vivid stories of daily frustration mixed with moments of exhilaration at the school make Voyage to the Island an unforgettably moving book. It becomes even more poignant against the backdrop of her own accomplishments as a deaf person advocating complete communication among all people in all communities.