I originally pictured a white family, with deaf child and a hearing child who start learning Plains Indian Sign Language from Native American’s, in 18 or 19th century United States. Another possibility would be a white family, with a non-verbal autistic child and a neurotypical child learning Black American Sign Language from a black family, in 19 or 20th century United States. Is there any book with a premise like this. It can be set in any country, and in any time period.
Edit: I’ve never read or heard of a book like this. This started out as a writing idea, but I’m wondering if it’s ever been done before.
by neigh102
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Not exactly this, but… *The Poisonwood Bible* by Barbara Kingslover is (apart from being a truly great novel, IMO) about a white missionary family from the US (father, mother and four daughters) who are uprooted by the bible-thumping father to the Congo in the 1960s (just as that country is about to gain independece) to bring the word of God to the “poor heathens”… of course they are totally clueless about their new environment. One of the daughters is hemiplegic and somewhat neurodivergent (she doesn’t speak much) and she, perhaps first and more than any of them, begins to connect with their new world. The story is told with each chapter in the voice of one of the five women (the father is a lost cause from the start, and we only meet him through the eyes of the others). It’s very readable, and.. well, I loved it.