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Invisible: My Journey through Vision and Hearing Loss
Ruth Silver's young life was challenged in ways most of us will never know. A silent, frightened child with undiagnosed vision loss, her world was one of limited vision that ultimately became one of total darkness. Once the situation had a name-retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a progressive eye disease-she at least knew what she was dealing with. As she grew, her other contact with the world-sound-was also taken from her. Where others might have given up, Ruth refused to surrender to the darkness and silence.
As Ruth Silver's world shrank around her, her heart and ambition grew. She never stopped looking for ways to add meaning to her life. Inspired by her own experiences and challenges, she founded the Center for Deaf-Blind Persons in Milwaukee, a nonprofit agency dedicated to helping others living with the double disability of deaf-blindness.
Ruth's story demonstrates how a resilient spirit can propel a profoundly disabled person forward toward a happy, productive life. A charming young man by the name of Marv was destined to change her life even more; their enduring love story is one of hope, patience, and acceptance.
"Invisible" dispels myths, suggests useful teaching procedures, gives hope to people who are disabled and their families, and offers reassurance through her example that a person with profound disabilities can live a full, rich life.
As Ruth Silver's world shrank around her, her heart and ambition grew. She never stopped looking for ways to add meaning to her life. Inspired by her own experiences and challenges, she founded the Center for Deaf-Blind Persons in Milwaukee, a nonprofit agency dedicated to helping others living with the double disability of deaf-blindness.
Ruth's story demonstrates how a resilient spirit can propel a profoundly disabled person forward toward a happy, productive life. A charming young man by the name of Marv was destined to change her life even more; their enduring love story is one of hope, patience, and acceptance.
"Invisible" dispels myths, suggests useful teaching procedures, gives hope to people who are disabled and their families, and offers reassurance through her example that a person with profound disabilities can live a full, rich life.
294 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 2012
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271 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 10, 2017
I very much enjoyed this book that was written by my friend's mother about her life. I did cry through the first couple of chapters as she described her childhood experiences, so if you read it, you might want to have a tissue box with you when you begin, but I really thought it was wonderfully written.
December 30, 2015
This is a very strange book. It starts with a lot of potential as we have the story of a young girl growing up through the 1940s in the US, in a strictly orthodox Jewish family and then having to deal with first sight loss and then the extra blow of hearing loss but because of the style of writing it never achieves its potential as it is such a difficult read.
It's written as if everything, events and dialogue, were taken from a diary written on a regular basis but then poorly edited, i.e., merely only days left out, but we don't get the assistance that accompanies a diary with the dates indicating the entries. Due to Silvers 'editing' we can have weeks or even months go past on a single page. So it gets very confusing. On other occasions two or three pages are taken up by a simple, and often not very interesting discussion.
However, we do learn a bit from all this chaos. That Ruth grew up fearing her own shadow and taking those fears well into her adult life. That she came from a family that would today be considered dysfunctional at best and with parents that, due to their own fears and hang-ups, force their daughter to make all attempts possible to hide the fact that she can't see very well and has a disease which will make her sight progressively worse. In this her mother is the worse, considering a physical disability a mark of shame on her (and the family). And the siblings aren't much better.
Silver's lack of confidence oozes from the pages, on all new occasions. This is bizarre as she is making decisions about her life which need the very opposite. She trains and becomes a teacher of blind and deaf children, a task which most (including myself) would never consider doing due to the difficulties involved. Whilst loosing her sight she then fosters a blind-deaf child. Instead of considering what that entails she just goes on about the fear she had in telling her parents.
The second half of the book takes a slightly different tack as she describes the difficulties with the children she fosters, as well as the emotional struggles involved in having to say goodbye to a child she had come to love. But here we are plagued by too much minutia, too much detail of not very important conversations. The problems and the circumstances could have been made more readable if she had considered her style of writing much more before just putting down reminiscences.
And then after many pages over problems over fostering, and then adoption, her loss of hearing just gets slotted in as a seeming afterthought. This takes us into the 1960s and the next we learn we are being told about events in the 1980s which started off the agency to help the deaf-blind. This is in an epilogue.
The structure is very strange.
It's written as if everything, events and dialogue, were taken from a diary written on a regular basis but then poorly edited, i.e., merely only days left out, but we don't get the assistance that accompanies a diary with the dates indicating the entries. Due to Silvers 'editing' we can have weeks or even months go past on a single page. So it gets very confusing. On other occasions two or three pages are taken up by a simple, and often not very interesting discussion.
However, we do learn a bit from all this chaos. That Ruth grew up fearing her own shadow and taking those fears well into her adult life. That she came from a family that would today be considered dysfunctional at best and with parents that, due to their own fears and hang-ups, force their daughter to make all attempts possible to hide the fact that she can't see very well and has a disease which will make her sight progressively worse. In this her mother is the worse, considering a physical disability a mark of shame on her (and the family). And the siblings aren't much better.
Silver's lack of confidence oozes from the pages, on all new occasions. This is bizarre as she is making decisions about her life which need the very opposite. She trains and becomes a teacher of blind and deaf children, a task which most (including myself) would never consider doing due to the difficulties involved. Whilst loosing her sight she then fosters a blind-deaf child. Instead of considering what that entails she just goes on about the fear she had in telling her parents.
The second half of the book takes a slightly different tack as she describes the difficulties with the children she fosters, as well as the emotional struggles involved in having to say goodbye to a child she had come to love. But here we are plagued by too much minutia, too much detail of not very important conversations. The problems and the circumstances could have been made more readable if she had considered her style of writing much more before just putting down reminiscences.
And then after many pages over problems over fostering, and then adoption, her loss of hearing just gets slotted in as a seeming afterthought. This takes us into the 1960s and the next we learn we are being told about events in the 1980s which started off the agency to help the deaf-blind. This is in an epilogue.
The structure is very strange.
October 9, 2012
Candid and inspiring story of a Milwaukee woman who has dealt with the challenges of blindness and deafness as well as discrimination. Her perseverance and pluck were amazing to read about. She has helped many others with her establishment of the Center for Deaf-Blind Persons.
July 31, 2012
Engrossing and moving.
November 20, 2015
This was a very moving book in which the Author gives you an inside view of what it is like to lose your sight and hearing. I found this read very moving.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews