Special Collections
Blindness and Visual Impairment Special Collection
Description: A collection featuring biographies, memoirs, fiction and non-fiction by and about members of the blind community. #disability
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When The Blizzard Blows
by Kenneth JerniganThis is the seventh book in the Kernel Book Series. In these books, people who are blind share incidents from their lives and tell how they coped with them. Some are serious; some are humorous; all are thought-provoking. Other books in this series are available from Bookshare.
Beginnings and Blueprints
by Kenneth JerniganThis is a motivational book showing that blind individuals can live productive lives doing the things that sighted people do and even succeed at it!
Gray Pancakes and Gold Horses
by Kenneth JerniganHow do blind children learn the details of the hundreds of small daily acts that sighted children pick up without ever even knowing they have done it? A blind boy sits in a farm house on a summer night and wonders which way to shake his head to mean yes and no. He guesses and loses, and his mother's feelings are hurt. I know, for I was that boy.
Tapping the Charcoal
by Kenneth JerniganVarious individuals tell their story of overcoming blindness and becoming productive employed members of society. Their experiences are an encouragement to all of us who must overcome challenges.
Standing on One Foot
by Kenneth JerniganThis is book six of the Kernel Series. The ways of overcoming challenges that face individuals who want a normal life in spite of blindness is revealed in these short true-to-life stories.
Wall-To-Wall Thanksgiving
by Kenneth JerniganThis is the thirteenth book in the Kernel Series. Its chapters are: Don't Throw the Nickel Boy Was I Bamboozled Lessons from the Charcoal Pit Concerning Books, Lawn Mowers, and Bus Rides Children, Fruitcake, and Rectangles The Wall-to-Wall Thanksgiving Meeting the Challenge Daddy Read Me Walking the Balance Beam Big Enough to Ride the Bike and, of course, Dr. Jernigan's introduction, which ties together the featured vignettes. Other books in this series are available from Bookshare.
Toothpaste and Railroad Tracks
by Kenneth JerniganThis is the eighth book in the Kernel Books Series--a series of books in which people who are blind tell about life situations and how they coped with them. "What do toothpaste and railroad tracks have in common? Just about the same that axes and law books do--nothing and everything. They are the building blocks of the routine of daily existence. In a very real sense they are the essence of humanity itself. When I was younger (maybe 40 years ago), there was a popular song called "Little Things Mean a Lot." It dealt with what the title implies, but its message was much more than that. It was that each little incident (relatively unimportant in and of itself) combines with all of the other trivial events that are constantly happening to us to form the pattern of our lives. It is not the major events but the recurring details that make us what we are--that determine whether we will succeed or fail, be happy and productive or sad and miserable. Other books in this series are available from Bookshare."
Old Dogs and New Tricks
by Kenneth JerniganThe tenth book in the Kernel Book Series contains these vignettes: Editor's Introduction Old Dogs and New Tricks The Sliding Board Tending to My Knitting Roller Coasters Serving Communion and Loving Elizabeth. Other books in this series are available from Bookshare.
Kenneth Jernigan
by Kenneth JerniganCompiled writings of Dr. Kenneth Jernigan with editorial introduction and notes
Do You Remember the Color Blue?
by Sally Hobart AlexanderChildren ask questions of an author who lost her vision at the age of twenty-six, including "How did you become blind?" "How can you read?" and "Was it hard to be a parent when you couldn't see your kids?"
Rex
by Cathleen LewisThe inspiring story of Rex, a boy who is not only blind and autistic, but who also happens to be a musical savant.
How can an 11-year old boy hear a Mozart fantasy for the first time and play it back note-for-note perfectly-but struggle to navigate the familiar surroundings of his own home?
Cathleen Lewis says her son Rex's laugh of total abandon is the single most joyous sound anyone could hear, but his tortured aversion to touch and sound breaks her heart and makes her wonder what God could have had in mind.
In this book she shares the mystery of Rex and the highs, lows, hopes, dreams, joy, sorrows, and faith she has journeyed through with him.
Come, Let Me Guide You
by Susan KriegerCome, Let Me Guide You explores the intimate communication between author Susan Krieger and her guide dog Teela over the ten-year span of their working life together.
This is a book about being led by a dog to new places in the world and new places in the self, a book about facing life's challenges outwardly and within, and about reading those clues--those deeply felt signals--that can help guide the way. It is also, more broadly, about the importance of intimate connection in human-animal relationships, academic work, and personal life. In her previous book, Traveling Blind: Adventures in Vision with a Guide Dog by My Side, Krieger focused on her first two years with Teela, her lively Golden Retriever-Yellow Labrador.
Come, Let Me Guide You continues the narrative, beginning at the moment the author must confront Teela's retirement and then reflecting on the entire span of their relationship. These emotionally moving stories offer the reader personal entrée into a life of increasing pleasure and insight as Krieger describes how her relationship with her guide dog has had far-reaching effects, not only on her abilities to navigate the world while blind, but also on her writing and teaching, her ability to face loss, and her sense of self. Come, Let Me Guide You is an invaluable contribution to the literature on human-animal communication and on the guide-dog-human experience, as well as to disability and feminist ethnographic studies. It shows how a relationship with a guide dog is unique among bonds, for it rests upon highly regulated connections yet touches deep emotional chords.
For Krieger, those chords have resulted in these memorable stories, often humorous and playful, always instructive, and generative of broader insight.
Through Different Eyes
by Tom PeyAt age 38, a childhood accident came back to haunt Tom Pey and took his sight. Follow his struggle with depression, job loss and alcoholism. Follow his success as he finds a deeper meaning in life.
Out of the Whirlpool
by Sue Wiygul MartinSue Wiygul Martin has written a deeply honest and moving account of the rebuilding of her life after a desperate, impetuous act in her youth ended in traumatic blindness. Since that day, she has greeted the world with her trademark determination and humor, accepting the challenges placed before her as she adjusted to being blind.
She takes the reader through the process of blind rehabilitation in such a way that you feel you, too, are going through the process of learning new skills and making the emotional adjustment right along with her. You come to understand what it takes to rebuild a life after a traumatic episode that upends your world of dreams and expectations.
Now, after more than thirty years of an extraordinary recovery and reconciliation with the past, Martin is ready to share the simple truth of her journey. Advance readers have called her book a “Must read” for anyone in the field of blind rehab or anyone going through the adjustment to new blindness or other traumatic events in their lives. Martin’s truth is a universal truth, one which is so easy to lose sight of—we are all the same, yet so beautifully different. So, fasten your seat belts. Sue Martin would like to take you on a wild ride through this life of hers. Get ready for some joy, sorrow, beauty, a few cosmic slaps of enlightenment, and a thousand other thoughts and feelings along the way. Filled with adventure, with joy, and triumph, with adversity and adjustment to change, Out of the Whirlpool is a story about living life to the fullest. While she may have faced extraordinary challenges, in the end, she will tell you her story is everyone’s story.
If You Could See What I Hear
by Tom Sullivan and Derek L. GillThis memoir traces the life of Tom Sullivan from premature birth to age 26. Born blind from too much oxygen in his preemie incubator, he is alternately overprotected and set loose. His parents both encourage and hinder him. Mr Sullivan graduates from Perkins School for the Blind with many records, including most number of suspensions. He eventually graduates from Harvard, and pursues a life with music. He marries and has two children.
Never Be Discouraged
by Alice CrespoAlice Crespo was born in New York City, raised in Brooklyn, and grew up totally blind. She had to learn many things, and she realized that, with God's help, there was nothing that she couldn't do. The sky was the limit. Alice is now sixty years of age, and she wants to share her experiences and her life lessons with you. Here is her story. Contains image descriptions.
The Stolen Light
by Ved MehtaThe author recounts his experiences as a blind college student, and tells how he came to write his first book.
Against the Pollution of the I
by Jacques LusseyranJacques Lusseyran’s experience was both unique and exceptional but his insights are universally applicable and inspiring. Imagine being not only blinded as a child but surviving the Nazis’ Buchenwald concentration camp. And yet Lusseyran writes of how blindness enabled him to discover aspects of the world he would not otherwise have known. His writing vividly depicts senses beyond our "normal” five. In "What One Sees Without Eyes” he describes the divine "inner light” available to all. But, crucially, he finds this light to be under attack. Just as Lusseyran transcended his almost unspeakable experience, his writings give wise, triumphant voice to the human ability to "see” beyond sight and act with unexpected heroism. We can all, he asserts, learn to experience disabilities as gifts and see beyond what we see.
And There Was Light
by Jacques LusseyranWhen Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand resistance fighters. He was one of only thirty from the transport to survive. His gripping story is one of the most powerful and insightful descriptions of living and thriving with blindness, or indeed any challenge, ever published.
The Wonder Years
by Ted Hull and Paula L. StahelTed Hull was not a singer or a musician, however he was very involved in Stevie Wonder's life and Motown. Ted was Stevie's teacher, mentor and companion.
First Lady of the Seeing Eye
by Morris Frank and Blake ClarkThis story written by Morris Frank tells of how he trained in Switzerland with Buddy, the first Seeing Eye dog in America. Also tells of the very early history of The Seeing Eye in Morristown N.J. "Here are adventures that encompass thirty years and countless of miles: the fight to have dog guides admitted to restaurants and hotels, trains and planes; lectures and demonstrations all over the country; meetings with millionaires and Presidents--and with mountaineers and truckdrivers; and the humor and pathos of day-to-day events. The story begins on page 11. Un-numbered pages of photos, described and with captions, are between pages 64 and 65.
Blind
by Belo Miguel CiprianiThis memoir is based on the author's experience in losing his vision and learning to navigate the sighted-centric world.
Eyes Wide Open
by Isaac LidskyIn this New York Times bestseller, Isaac Lidsky draws on his experience of achieving immense success, joy, and fulfillment while losing his sight to a blinding disease to show us that it isn’t external circumstances, but how we perceive and respond to them, that governs our reality.
Fear has a tendency to give us tunnel vision—we fill the unknown with our worst imaginings and cling to what’s familiar. But when confronted with new challenges, we need to think more broadly and adapt. When Isaac Lidsky learned that he was beginning to go blind at age thirteen, eventually losing his sight entirely by the time he was twenty-five, he initially thought that blindness would mean an end to his early success and his hopes for the future. Paradoxically, losing his sight gave him the vision to take responsibility for his reality and thrive. Lidsky graduated from Harvard College at age nineteen, served as a Supreme Court law clerk, fathered four children, and turned a failing construction subcontractor into a highly profitable business.
Whether we’re blind or not, our vision is limited by our past experiences, biases, and emotions. Lidsky shows us how we can overcome paralyzing fears, avoid falling prey to our own assumptions and faulty leaps of logic, silence our inner critic, harness our strength, and live with open hearts and minds. In sharing his hard-won insights, Lidsky shows us how we too can confront life's trials with initiative, humor, and grace.
Soaring Into Greatness
by Gail HamiltonBorn ten weeks premature and requiring oxygen to survive, Gail Hamilton's first six weeks of life began within an incubator.
Six months later, doctors discovered that Gail had retrolental fibroplasia (RLF), an eye condition caused by the infusion of 100% pure oxygen. By age eleven, she was completely blind. Soaring into Greatness follows Gail's story as her outer visual world merged with her inner vision, forcing her to listen with her inner voice, to follow her heart and tune into her intuition.
Subjected to physical and emotional abuse, ostracized and oftentimes feeling alone, Gail's journey is one of the courage and perseverance it takes to find one's way through the darkness and soar.
"I believe my desire to fly must be bigger than my fear of falling. Vision is internal, not external, and is guided by my heart, not my eyes. In order to be free, to fly, I must want my dream, feel my dream, and believe that my dream will come true. Most importantly, I must live my dream. I am the creator of my destiny, the composer of my symphony, and I choose to live a life of greatness. " - Gail Hamilton
Blind but Now I See
by Kent GustavsonFrom the day Doc Watson stepped off the bus in New York City, the North Carolina music legend changed the world forever. His influence has been recognised by presidents and by the heroes of modern music. This is the first comprehensive biography of Doc Watson, with never before released details about the American guitar icons life.
This book includes new interviews with popular musicians: Ben Harper, Michelle Shocked, Warren Haynes, Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Tom Paxton, Maria Muldaur, John Cohen, Mike Seeger, Peggy Seeger, Abigail Washburn, Ketch Secor, Marty Stuart, Norman Blake, Tony Rice, Pat Donohue, Peter Rowan, Si Kahn, Tommy Emmanuel, Tony Trischka, Greg Brown, Guy Clark, Don Rigsby, David Grisman, Alice Gerrard, Alan O Bryant, Edgar Meyer, Guy Davis, Jack Lawrence, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, Jean Ritchie, Jerry Douglas, Jonathan Byrd, Larry Long, Paddy Moloney, and many more. . .