I am posting this article,m written by a friend of mine, a review of a book she read. I completely concur with her feelings, which she expresses far better than I could. I have her permission to post this. Check out the link to her blog to read more of the Diva’s thoughts. It’s always well worth the read.

http://thedivapointofview.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/a-dispatch-from-a-diva/

Recently, I read For the Benefit of those who See: Dispatches from the World of the Blind by Rosemary Mahoney for a book club. I should have known what
was in store for me just from reading the wordy title.
Before sharing with you why I’m less than impressed with the author’s dramatic, condescending and saccharin prose, I’ll attempt to give you a concise description
of the book.
During the author’s last year of college, she was smacked in the eye by a squash racket and while her scratched cornea was healing, she was unable to see
out of her right eye. The author bemoaned her blindness—all be it temporary–and equated blindness to being trapped in a locked coffin. In short, to be
blind would be a fate worse than death. This brief limiting of the author’s vision spawned a morbid terror of losing her vision forever.
Years later, the author was asked to write an article on Braille without Borders – a school for the blind that was founded in Tibet by a blind woman and
her sighted partner. Apprehensive, disgusted and reluctantly curious, the author stayed in Tibet for an unspecified amount of time while writing her article.
After her time in Tibet, our intrepid author decided to spend three months teaching English at a school for the visually impaired in India. And from this
experience, the book in question was born.
The author interspersed an incomplete history of blindness among numerous explanations of her horror of losing her vision, her time in Tibet and India
and lengthy and unflattering descriptions of the eyes of every single person with a visual impairment she has encountered in her life. And after three
months among a small group of people who are blind from several countries, the author decided she’d gained enough insight to share her new and miraculous
understanding of the blind with her sighted peers.
Three months… A mere finger snap of time and yet… and yet the author had the audacity to believe that she could write a concise and realistic accounting
of what it means to be blind…
Well… this diva, who has been blind for 35 years, is here to tell you that the author got it all wrong.
The author ranted long and often about how it would feel to lose her precious vision. It would be like being trapped in a locked coffin, she said. Screaming
for help while the world went on, uncaring, around her. Life would be unbearable – hopeless, and pointless, the author would be sucked down into a quagmire
of helplessness and darkness with no way to communicate with the world. To die would be preferable.
As I read her completely uncensored thoughts, I felt as though somebody had walked up to me and punched me in the face without provocation. My life is
not hopeless or pointless and never has been. I have a family who loves me despite my numerous flaws, a circle of supportive friends and a job I love.
I’m happy, healthy and I contribute in a small, and hopefully, meaningful way to society. And most of the time, I don’t sit around feeling sorry for myself,
because I’ve never seen a rainbow, a sunset, twinkling stars, the Eifel Tower, flowers blooming, a movie, a smile, my dog, my mom or my own face. I do
not, as the author seems to believe, live in blissful ignorance of all the beauty and horror that surrounds me on a daily basis. I just see the world in,
to me at least, a different yet equally rewarding and fulfilling way. I choose not to sit in a dark room, sobbing inconsolably over all the things I’ll
never see. I live my life, experiencing the vivid vibrancy of the world in my own way. And death is far from preferable.
I found the author’s history lesson on the evolution of people’s attitudes toward the blind fascinating. Fascinating, because it had such a negative slant.
Her history began with biblical references and progressed through the centuries – highlighting the terrible treatment of people who were blind. The author
shared numerous examples of when the blind were treated like animals – subjected to abuse, poverty and extreme degradation. Blindness was viewed as a sin,
a punishment, a sign of reduced mental abilities… Her ever so enlightening history included a story about Helen Keller in the late 1880’s. She went to
the circus and so terrifying was she, men in the freak show ran from her in fear. And that’s basically where her history ended. It was almost as though
the 20th and 21st centuries, with all the advancements in technology and attitude, were but a brief footnote in the bleak history of the blind. She did
often quote from a book written by a math professor who lost his vision in middle age. However, this book was written during the 1940’s and reflected the
attitudes toward blindness that were common during that era.
The author spent an inordinate amount of time expanding upon stereotypes that people who are blind have been rejecting for years.
Super blind… The author waxed poetic about the founder of Braille without Borders and her ability to navigate through a congested Tibetan city without
brushing a single obstacle with her cane. While I am certain she has some mad travel skills, no blind person can walk through a bustling city without encountering
something or someone from time to time. It’s not realistic. It was as if the author had to exaggerate the travel skills of the blind people in her book
to emphasize how amazing and patient one must be to travel without sight. The author also emphasized a blind person’s other senses. The blind students
could smell her, instantly knew when she carried a mug of beer into a large room, always knew that it was she walking by due to the brisk tap-tap of her
shoes… I mean, blind people do use their other senses to pick up cues in the environment, but we aren’t infallible.
This book is full of groping. Positively flooded with scenes of blind people touching the author, other blind people and myriad objects in the environment.
In several scenes, the author was swarmed by blind students wishing to touch her – to examine her clothing, hair, face… I think I vomited a little while
reading all the scenes of blind groping. It’s disgusting and degrading and not socially appropriate
I remember talking to a little girl who was blind while I was in college. She was about four-years-old and her mom plunked her down on a table in front
of me. The girl proceeded to pat at my hair and neck. She grabbed my breast before plunging her hand down the low neckline of my shirt. Even though her
touch was completely innocent, I felt uncomfortable and violated. The child was too young to understand social cues and I’m sure that were I to meet that
girl again—a college student herself now—she would know to keep her hands to herself. Why the author didn’t tell the swarming students to get the hell
away from her shall remain forever a mystery to me.
The author wrote at length about how happy and grateful the blind adults were to be part of the Braille without Borders program in India. They walked about,
smiling as they slammed into obstacles and dumped tea down the backs of each other’s shirts on the way to the table at meals. The author’s constant references
to the patient, happy blind people were positively nauseating. I felt like I was in the midst of a joyous Disney movie. At any moment, the blind students
would leap up on the table in the author’s classroom. They would begin twirling their canes overhead while belting out an exuberant song about how wonderful
it is to be blind.
Compared to the author’s attitude at the beginning of the book, the scenes of the happy and contented blind people were dissonant and a little false. Nobody
is happy and grateful all the time. Even people who are eager to learn skills that will help them to be successful, contributing members of society.
But how will the author’s students be respected and welcomed members of society if they continue to display all the blindisms the author referenced?
They rocked. They looked down. They often sat with fists pressed to their eyes – wrapped around the person beside them. And the author did not think to
educate them about appropriate social behavior.
And finally, the aspect of the book that was, for me, the most distressing…
The author described the eyes of each and every person with a visual impairment she’s encountered throughout her life in excruciating and unflattering
detail. Not one person was described as having pretty eyes. As I read about crossed eyes, tilted eyes, eyes that rolled, were filmed with white, eyes that
wouldn’t open and eyes that constantly leaked, nausea churned about in my stomach in ever tightening, greasy knots. How would the author describe my eyes?
I’ve been told that my eyes are a pleasing shade of blue and when I take the time to put on mascara, my eyes actually look quite nice. Would the author
notice this, or would she first fixate upon the fact that I can’t always control the movement of my eyes. I don’t often worry about what people think when
they first see me, but the author’s obsessive and disrespectful descriptions of the eyes of the blind people she’s met made me start wondering…
Does the barista cringe from the sight of my eyes while making the perfect London Fog? Does it make my boss uncomfortable to sit across from me during
a meeting? When I meet with prospective students and their families, are they fixated on my blindness instead of the information I’m sharing? Do my eyes—or
something else inherently blind about me—scare off potential boyfriends? Does the majority of people I encounter view me with a mixture of fear, trepidation
and disgust just as the author so often felt around blind people?
Even as I went out for a drink with a friend, chatted on the phone and read a book, an insidious little voice seemed to whisper these pointless questions
in my ear. And I felt like absolute shit. Somehow, I’ve allowed this book to get to me… to get under my skin and hurt me deeply.
This morning, When my iPhone alerted me to the dawning of another early Monday morning, I did not want to go to work. I wanted to burrow beneath my blankets
and stay home. Not because I hate early mornings with a passion—which I do—but because I did not want to face the world today. I wanted to remain cocooned
in the comfort of my bed with a go to romance, my way of blocking out the world for a few precious and peaceful hours. It took a herculean effort for me
to put aside my dramatic discomfort so I could go to work.
And all day at work, I couldn’t stop thinking about the misrepresentation of blind people everywhere and as I answered phone calls, reviewed student files
and sat through meetings, my mind kept returning to the author and her damn book. I wonder what the blind students would think of their “Auntie Rose” if
they could read her perceptions of them. I wonder what your average sighted person thinks upon reading the author’s perception of blindness.
And that’s when I decided I needed to voice my opinion about this book.
I think this book is the author’s way of dealing with her guilt over her extreme reaction to the mere thought of losing her vision. I feel as though the
author did all she could to highlight the differences between people with sight and those with visual impairments, instead of expounding upon the similarities.
She was able to elevate the blind to a pedestal in her own mind, but even so, I still sensed a bit of self-satisfied superiority. “Yes, I can see some
positive traits in the blind while holding myself apart and slightly above them.”
I’ve decided that this book is, in essence, a way for the author to feel vindicated. It is part self-indulgent pity party and partly a way for the author
to philosophize on a subject she knows precious little about. And after ranting at the book club, on Facebook and writing a review of the book on audible.com.
After worrying and fretting about how I am perceived and after losing sleep and allowing myself to spend two days obsessing over the author’s perception
of people who are blind, I have come to this conclusion…
I shall not give this book another thought.