By the end of Chapter 6, The Atoms of Sign I felt as justice somehow prevailed as Stokoe's work and the legitimacy of ASL as a language were finally recognized. And then it occured to me that this entire ordeal was entirely unknown to me unti l I read this chapter. And 20 years after the "highly public apex" of the "Stonewall of the emerging deaf pride movement," our class still had a frame adjustment to understand that ASL wasn't gestural English. Why? Is this oversight because the deaf make up such a small percentage of the population or is there something else at play? Is so it threatening to hearing people for there to be a language that circumvents the act of speech? Why didn't I learn the truth about ASL in kindergarten or first grade? I just don't understand why, once Stokoe teased out all of the variety, subtley, and meaning contained in every sign, why there's still this general perception that ASL is just a system of awkwardly mimed English nouns.