In Home Signs, Joshua Reno presents an auto-ethnographic account of his caregiving life with his son, Charlie, who is autistic and completely nonverbal. Reno views ‘home signs’ here as an idiosyncratic and innovative way of expression that nonverbal people employ to communicate—for example, pinches (chapter 1) or tickling (chapter 2) in Charlie’s case. While largely overlooked, Reno critically argues nonverbal moves as such—despite being epistemologically ‘troublesome’—are socially meaningful and materially real. Featuring as deeply interpretive and relational, such home signs dynamically grow within close relationships (i.e. ‘home’) and can only be approached as signings of the present.

Reno delves deeply into situations where home signs are often ‘undermined’ or ‘overmined’, that is, go unrecognised because intentional interactions are reduced to mere physical encounters (i.e. undermined), or because all messages are subsumed under normative predictions by communicative devices or caregivers (i.e. overmined). Regarding the undermining of home signs, Reno discusses how the seemingly ‘aggressive’ acts like pinches and slaps, while often interpreted as purely violence, are potentially expressive—for example, to seek out connection in Charlie’s case (chapter 1). Furthermore, Reno brings attention to how tickling carries complex social meaning and communicative significance (chapter 2). This is exemplified in Charlie’s ‘iggle’, the only word he says to initiate such a playful, intimate, bodily interaction, thus reasserting his own agency.

There are situations where home signs are overmined as well. In chapter 3, Reno shares how Charlie uses his tablet as home sign equipment to communicate whether he wants others to accompany or not—for example, tossing his tablet aside or getting absorbed in it. Based on Charlie’s unique usage of communicative devices as such, Reno questions current overreliance on linguistic prostheses in producing a ‘voice’, which overlooks the real people using them and these people’s agency in speaking. In chapter 4, Reno further interrogates the interpersonal sympathy of significant others in caregiving, which—despite a necessity in home signing—runs the risk of dismissing some nonverbal communicative efforts. An example is when caregivers attend more to institutional norms or mandates, rather than listening carefully to the actual communicative needs.

Towards the end, Reno extends the critique by confronting the world of hygiene and toileting where home signs are further complicated by ethical tensions (chapter 5). Notably, Reno calls for a care about bodies, one that—rather than defaulting solely to learned hygiene habits—values the sharedness and mutuality in caregiving. Here, home signs with others matter significantly in not relinquishing the bodily autonomy and individual agency of people with disabilities.

Overall, Home Signs is a compelling invitation to rethink human communication, disability, and care. Throughout the book, Reno challenges the hegemonic ideologies around language and humanity, problematising the glottocentric bias that legitimises spoken language over other forms of communication, and the ableist bias that casts people with disabilities as incomplete and nonnormative. By doing so, Reno foregrounds the need to acknowledge people like Charlie as ‘full-fledged subjects’, as opposed to the long-held deficit and dehumanising view of people with disabilities.