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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Sequence
by Arun LakraTheo has been named Time Magazine's Luckiest Man Alive. For twenty consecutive years he has successfully bet double or nothing on the Super Bowl coin toss. And he's getting ready to risk millions on the twenty-first when he is confronted by Cynthia, a young woman who claims to have figured out his mathematical secret. Stem-cell researcher and professor Dr. Guzman is on the verge of a groundbreaking discovery. She's also learned that one of her students has defied probability to get all 150 multiple-choice questions wrong on his genetics exam, but it's not until he shows up to her office in the middle of the night that she's able to determine if it's simply bad luck. The two narratives intertwine like a fragment of DNA to examine the interplay between logic and metaphysics, science and faith, luck and probability. Belief systems clash, ideas mutate, and order springs from chaos. With razor-sharp wit and playful language, Sequence asks, in our lives, in our universe, and even in our stories, does order matter?
Senses Vol.1
by Andrew GreySometimes the heart is the most important sense. Caring for a young daughter with cancer is almost enough to make Ken Brighton give up, in Love Comes Silently, but former singer and next-door neighbor Patrick Flaherty brings hope for both of them--if he can manage to break his silence. In Love Comes in Darkness, Howard Justinian has always had to fight for his independence, in spite of his blindness, but when tragedy strikes, he may have to accept help in the form of unassuming Gordy Jarrett. In Love Comes Home, Greg Hampton's son Davey is losing his eyesight, but Tom Spangler isn't going to let that stop a boy from playing his favorite game.See excerpt for individual blurbs.
A Sense of the World
by Jason RobertsA biography of James Holman (1786-1857). James Holman was a 19th-century British naval officer who became blind at 25, but nevertheless became the greatest traveler of his time. With little money, and long before motorized conveyances made travel easy or popular, James Holman independently traveled over a quarter of a million miles, visiting more than 200 distinct cultures. Be forewarned, this book also contains some rather graphic and disturbing descriptions of the treatment of the Blind in the 19th century.
Seeing Home
by Ed Lucas and Christopher LucasSoon to be a major motion picture, Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story is the incredible true tale of a beloved Emmy-winning blind broadcaster who refused to let his disability prevent him from overcoming many challenging obstacles and achieving his dreams.In 1951, when he was only twelve years old, Ed Lucas was hit between the eyes by a baseball during a sandlot game in Jersey City. He lost his sight forever. To cheer him up, his mother wrote letters to baseball superstars of the day, explaining her son’s condition. Soon Ed was invited into their clubhouses and dugouts, as the players and coaches personally made him feel at home. Despite the warm reception he got from his heroes, Ed was told repeatedly by others that he would never be able to accomplish anything worthwhile because of his limitations. But Hall-of-Famer Phil Rizzuto became Ed’s mentor and encouraged him to pursue his passion—broadcasting. Ed then overcame hundreds of barriers, big and small, to become a pioneer—the first blind person covering baseball on a regular basis, a career he has successfully continued for six decades. Ed may have lost his sight, but he never lost his faith, which got him through many pitfalls and dark days. When Ed’s two sons were very young, his wife walked out and left him to raise them all by himself, which he did. Six years later, Ed’s ex-wife returned and sued him for full custody, saying that a blind man shouldn’t have her kids. The judge agreed, tearing Ed's sons away from their father's loving home. Ed fought the heartbreaking decision with appeals all the way up to the highest level of the court system. Eventually, he prevailed, marking the very first time in US history that a disabled person was awarded custody over a non-disabled spouse. Even in his later years, Ed is still enjoying a remarkably blessed life. In 2006, he married his second wife, Allison, at home plate in old Yankee Stadium, the only time that such a thing ever happened on that iconic spot. Yankee owner George Steinbrenner himself catered the whole affair, which was shown live on national television.Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story is truly a magical read and a universally uplifting and inspirational tale for everyone, whether or not you happen to be a sports fan. Over his long and amazing life, Ed has collected hundreds of anecdotes from his personal relationships and encounters with everyone, from kings and presidents to movie stars and sports Hall-of-Famers, many of which he shares in this memoir, using his trademark humorous and engaging style, cowritten with his youngest son, Christopher.
Second Suns
by David Oliver RelinFrom the co-author of Three Cups of Tea comes the inspiring story of two very different doctors--one from the United States, the other from Nepal--united in a common mission: to rid the world of preventable blindness.
In this transporting book, David Oliver Relin shines a light on the work of Geoffrey Tabin and Sanduk Ruit, gifted ophthalmologists who have dedicated their lives to restoring sight to some of the world's most isolated, impoverished people through the Himalayan Cataract Project, an organization they founded in 1995. Tabin was the high-achieving bad boy of Harvard Medical School, an accomplished mountain climber and adrenaline junkie as brilliant as he was unconventional. Ruit grew up in a remote Nepalese village, where he became intimately acquainted with the human costs of inadequate access to health care.
Together they found their life's calling: tending to the afflicted people of the Himalayas, a vast mountainous region with an alarmingly high incidence of cataract blindness.
Second Suns takes us from improvised plywood operating tables in villages without electricity or plumbing to state-of-the-art surgical centers at major American universities where these two driven men are restoring sight--and hope--to patients from around the world. With their revolutionary, inexpensive style of surgery, Tabin and Ruit have been able to cure tens of thousands--all for about twenty dollars per operation.
David Oliver Relin brings the doctors' work to vivid life through poignant portraits of patients helped by the surgery, from old men who cannot walk treacherous mountain trails unaided to cataract-stricken children who have not seen their mothers' faces for years. With the dexterity of a master storyteller, Relin shows the profound emotional and practical impact that these operations have had on patients' lives.
Second Suns is the moving, unforgettable story of how two men with a shared dream are changing the world, one pair of eyes at a time.
Second Sight
by Robert V. HineThe author talks about when he goes blind, the things that happen to him, and when he regains his sight
Scattered Shadows
by John Howard GriffinThis extraordinary chronicle from the author of "Black Like Me" about his loss of sight is a powerful testament to the human spirit. Edited and introduced by Robert Bonazzi
Say No to the Devil
by Ian ZackWho was the greatest of all American guitarists?
You probably didn't name Gary Davis, but many of his musical contemporaries considered him without peer. Bob Dylan called Davis "one of the wizards of modern music. " Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead--who took lessons with Davis--claimed his musical ability "transcended any common notion of a bluesman. " And the folklorist Alan Lomax called him "one of the really great geniuses of American instrumental music. " But you won't find Davis alongside blues legends Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Despite almost universal renown among his contemporaries, Davis lives today not so much in his own work but through covers of his songs by Dylan, Jackson Browne, and many others, as well as in the untold number of students whose lives he influenced.
The first biography of Davis, Say No to the Devil restores "the Rev's" remarkable story. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with many of Davis's former students, Ian Zack takes readers through Davis's difficult beginning as the blind son of sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South to his decision to become an ordained Baptist minister and his move to New York in the early 1940s, where he scraped out a living singing and preaching on street corners and in storefront churches in Harlem.
There, he gained entry into a circle of musicians that included, among many others, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Dave Van Ronk. But in spite of his tremendous musical achievements, Davis never gained broad recognition from an American public that wasn't sure what to make of his trademark blend of gospel, ragtime, street preaching, and the blues. His personal life was also fraught, troubled by struggles with alcohol, women, and deteriorating health.
Zack chronicles this remarkable figure in American music, helping us to understand how he taught and influenced a generation of musicians.
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.
Reviewing Blindness in French Fiction, 1789–2013
by Hannah ThompsonThis book argues that the most interesting depictions of blindness in French fiction are those which call into question and ultimately undermine the prevailing myths and stereotypes of blindness which dominate Western thought. Rather than seeing blindness as an affliction, a tragedy or even a fate worse than death, the authors examined in this study celebrate blindness for its own sake. For them it is a powerful artistic and creative force which offers new and surprising ways of describing, and relating to, reality. Canonical and lesser-known novels from a range of genres, including the roman noir, science fiction, auto-fiction and realism are analyzed in detail to show how the presence of blind characters invites the reader to abandon his or her traditional reliance on the sense of sight and engage with the world in sensual, and hitherto unexpected, ways. This book challenges everything we thought we knew about blindness and invites us to revel in the pleasures and perils of reading blind.
Reflections
by Therese-Adèle HussonIn the 1820s, several years before Braille was invented, Therese-Adele Husson, a young blind woman from provincial France, wrote an audacious manifesto about her life, French society, and her hopes for the future. Through extensive research and scholarly detective work, authors Catherine Kudlick and Zina Weygand have rescued this intriguing woman and the remarkable story of her life and tragic death from obscurity, giving readers a rare look into a world recorded by an unlikely historical figure. Reflections is one of the earliest recorded manifestations of group solidarity among people with the same disability, advocating self-sufficiency and independence on the part of blind people, encouraging education for all blind children, and exploring gender roles for both men and women. Resolutely defying the sense of "otherness" which pervades discourse about the disabled, Husson instead convinces us that that blindness offers a fresh and important perspective on both history and ourselves. In rescuing this important historical account and recreating the life of an obscure but potent figure, Weygand and Kudlick have awakened a perspective that transcends time and which, ultimately, remaps our inherent ideas of physical sensibility
Reading by Touch
by Susanna MillarThe perceptual, linguistic and cognitive processes involved in sighted reading have been widely studied, but the use of touch raises new issues. Drawing on her research with novice and fluent braille readers, Susanna Millar examines how people initially process braille and how skill with sounds, words, meaning and spelling patterns influence processing. The main focus is on braille, but findings on the "Moon" script, vibrotactile devices, maps and icons are also considered in the context of their practical implications and access to computer technology.
Ray Charles
by Michael LydonAn extremely detailed account of Ray Charles' personal life, from his childhood to his death and funeral, and of his musical life, including every concert, gig, recording etc.
The Power of Love
by National Federation of the BlindThe Power of Love: How Kenneth Jernigan Changed the World for the Blind shares the voices of a collection of individuals whose writings reveal the deep truth that serves as the foundation for the life and work of Kenneth Jernigan.
His life and their writings together speak of how Thomas Jefferson's self-evident truths imply that equality extends to embrace blind people just as surely as this country has come to understand equality's inclusion of all people regardless of the color of their skin.
Ramona Walhof, editor of The Power of Love and longtime friend of Kenneth Jernigan, draws together the distinctive voices of individuals who knew Kenneth Jernigan and whose lives he touched through his work with the National Federation of the Blind. Each of the reflections begins with a brief biographical sketch that introduces the chapter's author and ties his or her life to Kenneth Jernigan and his work.
The book concludes with a chapter, "Blindness: The Federation at Fifty," a retrospective written by Kenneth Jernigan himself in the last decade of his life. The Power of Love: How Kenneth Jernigan Changed the World for the Blind gathers a polyphonic chorus of voices that tell how the power of love, coursing through the life of Kenneth Jernigan, changed the world for the blind and, in so doing, changed the world for everyone.
Poor Miss Finch
by Wilkie CollinsWilkie Collins's intriguing story about a blind girl, Lucilla Finch, and the identical twins who both fall in love with her, has the exciting complications of his better-known novels but it also overturns conventional expectations. Using a background of myth and fairy-tale to expand the boundaries of nineteenth-century realist fiction, Collins gives one of the best accounts in fiction of blindness and its implications.
The Politics of Blindness
by Graeme MccreathThis book provides a rallying cry so that the voice of users of services can be heard, and both the provision of services can be tailored by and shaped to their needs.
The anti-discrimination clause, which I was proud to contribute to in the extension of the Disability Discrimination Act, the creation of the Disability Rights Commission (now part of the Equality and Human Flights Commission) and the Office of Disability inside UK government, has enabled individual and collective experience of inequality and discrimination to be tackled head on.
The Point of Vanishing
by Howard AxelrodInto the Wild meets Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man--a lyrical memoir of a life changed in an instant and of the perilous beauty of searching for identity in solitude On a clear May afternoon at the end of his junior year at Harvard, Howard Axelrod played a pick-up game of basketball. In a skirmish for a loose ball, a boy's finger hooked behind Axelrod's eyeball and left him permanently blinded in his right eye. A week later, he returned to the same dorm room, but to a different world. A world where nothing looked solid, where the distance between how people saw him and how he saw had widened into a gulf. Desperate for a sense of orientation he could trust, he retreated to a jerry-rigged house in the Vermont woods, where he lived without a computer or television, and largely without human contact, for two years. He needed to find, away from society's pressures and rush, a sense of meaning that couldn't be changed in an instant.From the Trade Paperback edition.ions of perception, time, identity, and meaning.From the Trade Paperback edition.
People of Vision
by James J. Megivern and Marjorie L. MegivernPeople of Vision: A History of the American Council of the Blind. The history of the treatment of individuals who are blind by other members of society is fraught with misconceptions, prejudices, myths, and stereotypes.
There are those who believe that blind people are OK as long as they stay "in their place," removed from society. Others feel that blind individuals are helpless and hopeless, deserving only of charity and pity. Still others have the notion that all blind people can be taught certain skills which make them unusually suited to a few specific jobs. The idea that people who are blind are first of all people, capable of and deserving the opportunity to be fully assimilated, fully participating members of society as equals has gained some recognition in certain parts of this country but still has a long way to go.
Overbrook School for the Blind (The Campus History Series)
by Edith WilloughbySince 1832, Overbrook School for the Blind has been a leader in providing educational programs to children and young people who are blind and visually impaired. Julius Friedlander, the schools founder, and other early leaders worked hard to inform people about the educational needs of the children. Their efforts resulted in providing reading material for the blind and Overbrook's production of the first embossed book in America, the Gospel of Mark, and the publication of the first magazine for the blind, Lux en Tenebrae. Offering students access to all educational opportunities continues to be the schools main goal, and in the early 1990s, Overbrook pioneered the development of a school wide technology initiative that provided students with the ability to access the curriculum, communicate, and be successful in employment. Through rare photographs and documents, Overbrook School for the Blind offers a glimpse at the schools role in reaching out to people who are blind and it showcases how Overbrook has helped thousands of students to achieve independence, self-confidence, and the skills to experience active and fulfilling lives.
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.
Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind
by Lindy BergmanOut of Sight, Not Out of Mind presents a personal account of living successfully with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), combined with powerful new information on effective service delivery. Ninety-three-year old Lindy Bergman illustrates the ways in which life with low vision can be lived with independence, dignity, and personal satisfaction. Also included are highly informative chapters, written by the world-renowned experts from The Chicago Lighthouse for People Who are Blind or Visually Impaired, encompassing the latest information about the causes and treatment of AMD; a concise, informative overviews of the effects of aging on vision, the emotional and psychological components of vision loss and the integration of the individual's psychological recovery into low vision service delivery; and a cutting-edge model of rehabilitation that meets the challenges of service provision today. Foreword by Jonathan Safran Foer, award-winning author of Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
Out Of Sight
by Art Schreiber and Hal SimmonsA high level radio news broadcast executive, Art Schreiber suddenly lost his eyesight. At the top of his career as a radio station general manager, Art awoke one morning at a resort near Santa Fe, New Mexico, unable to see. His world was in complete darkness. After facing total despair, Art plotted his return to the top while learning to live life in a new way in a new world. Art's refusal to fold his tent when his eyesight failed and his struggle to live life to the fullest will inspire any person who reads his story. Art's greatest reward in life is encouraging and motivating others who face similar challenges.
Out of Darkness
by Cindy WatsonShort-listed for the 2011 Golden Oak Award
From the moment three-year-old Jeff Healey first laid a guitar across his lap in what was to become his signature style, it was clear he was no ordinary kid.
Losing both eyes to retinoblastoma, a rare form of cancer, opened a door to another world for Jeff, a newly adopted infant.
Out of darkness he created music, becoming one of the most influential blues-rock and jazz performers of our time, beginning with his first hit album, See the Light.
In this up-close and personal account, loaded with never-before-seen photographs, memorabilia, and intimate recollections of family, friends, and fellow musicians, we discover this unique music icon’s dynamic career, which saw him collaborate with everyone from George Harrison and Eric Clapton to B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
From Jeff’s lonely start one snowy night at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Toronto to his untimely end in the same building, we come away with a potent message of empowerment and a renewed sense of hope.
Organizing the Blind
by Roberto GarvíaThis book is a case study which narrates the history of the National Organization of the Spanish Blind (ONCE), established in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Contrary to other affluent countries where most blind people live on welfare benefits, the Spanish blind enjoy full employment. Furthermore, the average income of the Spanish blind is higher than that of the sighted. Why is this so? Why the blind, and not the deaf mute, or any other group of disabled people? This book shows that ONCE answers these questions.
The book explains ONCE'S origins, the shifting strategies that the organization has pursued to adapt to an ever-changing environment, its original goals and the way they have mutated and been interpreted, its conflicting relationship with an authoritarian regime, its struggle to find its place in a democratic regime, and its relations with other groups of disabled people. A historical narrative, the book lies at the intersection between disability and organization studies, history and sociology.
It will be of interest to all scholars of disability studies, the sociology of work, the history of medicine and contemporary Spanish history.