The People Who Spell: The Last Students from the Mexican National School for the Deaf

One ENS signer, María de los Ángeles Bedolla, inspired the title of the book, . In her account, she describes herself and her peers as cultured and educated compared to the young deaf people of today. The ENS signers pride themselves on , LSM fingerspelling, which they consider key to their sophistication. Ramsey relates each of the signers’ childhoods, marriages, work experiences, and retirements. However, she brings threads of their stories together to reveal a common and abiding disappointment in modern-day Mexico’s failure to educate its deaf citizens according to the promise made more than 100 years ago. The narratives of the ENS signers detail their remarkable lives and heritage but also legitimately question the future of Mexico’s young deaf people.