All languages and cultures have literatures through which they pass down stories and transmit the experi ence and values of a group of people. In the late 1960s, linguistic analysis of American Sign Language (ASL) documented that the language of Deaf Americans was bona fide. By the 1980s, cultural descriptions of the DEAF-WORLD1 began to appear in publications. In more recent times, the literature of ASL has been rec ognized and celebrated. Perhaps one of the more for mal celebrations of ASL literature has been the 1991 and 1996 National American Sign Language Litera ture Conferences at Rochester, New York. With the recognition of ASL literature, literary and linguistic analyses of the emerging canon have arisen as academic fields of study (e.g., see Bauman, 1996; Krentz, 1996; Neumann, 1995; Ormsby, 1995; Peters, 1995; Rose, 1992; Rutherford, 1993; Valli, 1994; Wil cox & Sweetser, 1996, among others). In addition, jus tification for the inclusion of ASL as a language for for eign language credit at secondary and postsecondary institutions has required recognition of ASL literature (Frishburg, 1988). But what does it mean to be literate in a signed language? What is ASL literature?