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Planet of the Blind: A Memoir
"In the country of the blind," the old adage asserts, "the one-eyed man is king." But in Stephen Kuusisto's superb new memoir, The Planet of the Blind, the world of a one-eyed man is a kingdom of confusion and quixotic struggle. Born with only residual vision, one eye capable of 20/200 vision and the other unseeing, Kuusisto was led by the insistence of his mother and the ignorance of the society around him to an elaborate and harrowing attempt to appear sighted. At times the effort was life-threatening, as with the bicycle he rode from the ages of 10 to 30 ("Were my years of cycling an actuarial gift?" he wonders), and at other times profoundly humiliating, as when his stumblings and collisions are assumed to be signs of habitual drunkenness. Indeed, the almost inconceivable effort of maintaining his sighted masquerade leads to all sorts of self-destructive behavior, from obesity to anorexia, from booze and cigarettes to drugs and perilous clambers up fire escapes.
Most biography is a recounting of struggle that leads to success and achievement, but Kuusisto's story is of a lifelong struggle that leads to acceptance. For this gifted poet, the barely glimpsed visual world is an irresistible temptation, despite pain, embarrassment, and failure. When he finally submits to the white cane and a guide dog, suddenly he can envision a "Planet of the Blind," a place where those without sight live in peace with their own lives, where "everyone is free to touch faces, paintings, gardens," a place where beauty is behind the eye of the beholder. --John Longenbaugh
1 pages, Audio CD
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews
July 23, 2014
A riveting read. To grow up blind in a family who refuse to acknowledge the blindness or make any allowances for it seems at best bizarre and at worst hideously abusive. Stephen Kuusisto tells his extra-ordinary story and somehow refrains from labelling his family with either of these epithets. That Stephen is now able to embrace his disability has found a new freedom through his guide dog Corky , and has a job that makes good use of all his talents makes this an inspiring and life affirming story that should be widely read.
August 26, 2008
I never understood blindness. Now I'm closer. Plus, it's poetry.
September 18, 2007
I loved this book about a man and the guide dog who helped him find his way. The book isn't a sentimental love story about a man and his dog but rather a compelling story about a man whose unwilligness to acknowledge his visual limitations put him at mortal risk. The author is a poet and the prose is very lyrical. I read this book years ago but still think of it often and with great affection. It is an amazing journey which brings him to the dog that would finally help him to see in so many ways.
December 20, 2011
This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I base this simply on the fact that it is a book I’ve needed to read, and I wished that I had read a long while ago: a memoir by a blind man. A well-written, literate, sometimes funny, sometimes sad story that describes many of the same travails I’ve experienced myself.
But I suppose I should back up a step and say that the best thing about Kuusisto’s voice here is not that he is a blind man speaking about being blind. What makes this such a glorious wave of words is that he is a poet, and brings a very lyrical, musical, wonderfully descriptive life to his narrative. The dry and prosy nature of memoir puts me off the genre, and I generally don’t find a collection of anecdotes about someone’s life that interesting. It’s only when scenes, thoughts, and memories become endowed with meaning that the form becomes a powerful literary vehicle.
For example, here is Kuusisto talking about the effort to read in elementary school: “In school the printed word scrambles away from my one ‘reading eye’—words in fact seem to me like insects released from a box. While the class reads aloud, I watch the spirals of hypnotic light that ripple across my eyes when I move them from side to side. I do not belong here. My little body at this desk is something uncanny—a thing that belongs in the darkness and that has been brought to dalylight” (20).
Like me, Kuusisto is legally blind (total blindness is rare), meaning that he has limited sight. His visual field consists mostly of a swirl of colors and vague shapes, unless his face is very close, nearly touching something. It is a unique way of seeing, which does not amount to a naïve dismissal of its limitations. It is a different mode of perception that requires certain accommodations. As I well know, disability is a tight-wire act strung between the pillar of self-acceptance and independence and the altar of interdependence.
The visual capacity he has made him and his parents refuse to relegate him to the planet of the blind, a seemingly alien, lonely, and desolate place, as his parents imagined it, where beggars and prophets wander on the outskirts of life. I know of this experience as well, the syndrome known as “passing.” He played sports, zipped around with youthful energy, rode a bike—all with near-lethal results. His parents refused a social worker’s attempt to put him in a school for blind children. The resulting trials of public school, where he was mocked by classmates and teachers alike, were pretty hellish for him. Add to emotional and psychological trauma very real physical barriers to completing schoolwork, and you get one troubled blind kid. In turns indulging in food, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, and starving himself to near-fatal frailty and malnutrition, Kuusisto pummeled through adolescence in a “nacreous haze” (great phrase) of smoke, blurred images, poetry, and self-loathing.
His world starts to open with college, as so often happens: literature invigorates him with new life, he has his first long-awaited relationship with a woman. Though still “brutally difficult,” reading being an arduous and sometimes near-impossible task for him, yet he starts to “build the instrument that will turn my blindness into a manner of seeing” (66). More people learn of his condition. Still, there are many disappointments and hardships, and it won’t be until he is near forty that he comes to accept himself. He takes trips to the Prado museum where he can’t see the paintings, and Greece where he can’t see the ancient buildings and ruins. He seems to have an obsession with birds—elusive creatures he could never quite see—and there is one especially disquieting scene where he describes a rapturous solitary fondling of stuffed birds, feeling overjoyed yet perverse, comparing himself to a frotteurist (a person who orgasms from casual contact with strangers).
Despite his struggles, he gets into the graduate studies at the Iowa Writers Workshop, fraternizing with poets from around the world, and later gets a Fulbright scholarship to study in Helsinki—a place that turns out to be utterly dismal, depressing, and unwelcoming.
Driven to desperation, he finds that the more he embraces his disability, and the resources available to him, the more liberated he becomes. When he makes the decision to get a guide dog, he feels a sense of safety and belonging that only seemed fleeting before. Corky, a golden retriever who becomes his constant companion, fills him with confidence about this place in the world: “The street is more my own. I belong here” (170).
I fear that I cannot do justice to the author’s engaging story and style. Besides the many lines of poetry he quotes, and myths and historical accounts he cites, his forays in humor often left me laughing out loud, not something I do frequently while reading a book. Consider this exchange at the guide dog training school:
“I like it when you’re in an elevator and the door opens on some floor, and the sighted person who’s standing there won’t get on,” says Mary from Philadelphia.
“Is that because of the dog?” I ask, thinking that some people are afraid of all dogs, even guide dogs.
“No, I mean this is when I had a cane,” she says.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t mention the gun you were holding,” says Bill.
“Did you know that blind people can legally buy guns?” says Hank. “There’s nothing in the gun application about blindness.”
“Don’t you think a blind army would be a great idea?”
“No, the Italians tried it.”
(162)
When Kuusisto fantasizes about his own version of the planet of the blind, a place where no cures are needed, where music, touch, and imagination infuse experience, where the fears of the sighted are “assuaged with fragrant reeds” (148), where “self-contempt is a museum,” he is in a transitional state between the pillars of acceptance and denial. Being blind means limitations, awkward mistakes—going into the wrong bathroom, groping at a stranger’s car when waiting for a ride (sometimes to the terror of said strangers), tripping over small obstacles, being nearly killed in the street, taking longer to do certain tasks—but if the planet of the sighted and the planet of the blind collide, perhaps being blind can be less terrible than it at first seemed.
But I suppose I should back up a step and say that the best thing about Kuusisto’s voice here is not that he is a blind man speaking about being blind. What makes this such a glorious wave of words is that he is a poet, and brings a very lyrical, musical, wonderfully descriptive life to his narrative. The dry and prosy nature of memoir puts me off the genre, and I generally don’t find a collection of anecdotes about someone’s life that interesting. It’s only when scenes, thoughts, and memories become endowed with meaning that the form becomes a powerful literary vehicle.
For example, here is Kuusisto talking about the effort to read in elementary school: “In school the printed word scrambles away from my one ‘reading eye’—words in fact seem to me like insects released from a box. While the class reads aloud, I watch the spirals of hypnotic light that ripple across my eyes when I move them from side to side. I do not belong here. My little body at this desk is something uncanny—a thing that belongs in the darkness and that has been brought to dalylight” (20).
Like me, Kuusisto is legally blind (total blindness is rare), meaning that he has limited sight. His visual field consists mostly of a swirl of colors and vague shapes, unless his face is very close, nearly touching something. It is a unique way of seeing, which does not amount to a naïve dismissal of its limitations. It is a different mode of perception that requires certain accommodations. As I well know, disability is a tight-wire act strung between the pillar of self-acceptance and independence and the altar of interdependence.
The visual capacity he has made him and his parents refuse to relegate him to the planet of the blind, a seemingly alien, lonely, and desolate place, as his parents imagined it, where beggars and prophets wander on the outskirts of life. I know of this experience as well, the syndrome known as “passing.” He played sports, zipped around with youthful energy, rode a bike—all with near-lethal results. His parents refused a social worker’s attempt to put him in a school for blind children. The resulting trials of public school, where he was mocked by classmates and teachers alike, were pretty hellish for him. Add to emotional and psychological trauma very real physical barriers to completing schoolwork, and you get one troubled blind kid. In turns indulging in food, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, and starving himself to near-fatal frailty and malnutrition, Kuusisto pummeled through adolescence in a “nacreous haze” (great phrase) of smoke, blurred images, poetry, and self-loathing.
His world starts to open with college, as so often happens: literature invigorates him with new life, he has his first long-awaited relationship with a woman. Though still “brutally difficult,” reading being an arduous and sometimes near-impossible task for him, yet he starts to “build the instrument that will turn my blindness into a manner of seeing” (66). More people learn of his condition. Still, there are many disappointments and hardships, and it won’t be until he is near forty that he comes to accept himself. He takes trips to the Prado museum where he can’t see the paintings, and Greece where he can’t see the ancient buildings and ruins. He seems to have an obsession with birds—elusive creatures he could never quite see—and there is one especially disquieting scene where he describes a rapturous solitary fondling of stuffed birds, feeling overjoyed yet perverse, comparing himself to a frotteurist (a person who orgasms from casual contact with strangers).
Despite his struggles, he gets into the graduate studies at the Iowa Writers Workshop, fraternizing with poets from around the world, and later gets a Fulbright scholarship to study in Helsinki—a place that turns out to be utterly dismal, depressing, and unwelcoming.
Driven to desperation, he finds that the more he embraces his disability, and the resources available to him, the more liberated he becomes. When he makes the decision to get a guide dog, he feels a sense of safety and belonging that only seemed fleeting before. Corky, a golden retriever who becomes his constant companion, fills him with confidence about this place in the world: “The street is more my own. I belong here” (170).
I fear that I cannot do justice to the author’s engaging story and style. Besides the many lines of poetry he quotes, and myths and historical accounts he cites, his forays in humor often left me laughing out loud, not something I do frequently while reading a book. Consider this exchange at the guide dog training school:
“I like it when you’re in an elevator and the door opens on some floor, and the sighted person who’s standing there won’t get on,” says Mary from Philadelphia.
“Is that because of the dog?” I ask, thinking that some people are afraid of all dogs, even guide dogs.
“No, I mean this is when I had a cane,” she says.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t mention the gun you were holding,” says Bill.
“Did you know that blind people can legally buy guns?” says Hank. “There’s nothing in the gun application about blindness.”
“Don’t you think a blind army would be a great idea?”
“No, the Italians tried it.”
(162)
When Kuusisto fantasizes about his own version of the planet of the blind, a place where no cures are needed, where music, touch, and imagination infuse experience, where the fears of the sighted are “assuaged with fragrant reeds” (148), where “self-contempt is a museum,” he is in a transitional state between the pillars of acceptance and denial. Being blind means limitations, awkward mistakes—going into the wrong bathroom, groping at a stranger’s car when waiting for a ride (sometimes to the terror of said strangers), tripping over small obstacles, being nearly killed in the street, taking longer to do certain tasks—but if the planet of the sighted and the planet of the blind collide, perhaps being blind can be less terrible than it at first seemed.
August 26, 2015
I just finished reading Planet of the Blind for the second time, and it is absolutely amazing & stunning in the beauty of the language!
Stephen Kuusisto was born in the 50's, legally blind (he can see flashes of color, shifting shapes "by turns magical and disturbing"). Wishing to spare him the stigma and loneliness of being labelled handicapped, his parents taught him to deny his blindness, to try to "pass" as sighted. So he went to public school, rode a bike, tried to read with books pressed against his nose, faked "birdwatching" by repeating everything his friend said, creatively adding "intensifiers and adjectives." He went to college, traveled in Europe, negotiated cities and country.... wore telescopic glasses, suffered from terrible headaches, and repeatedly just barely escaped death.
Finally, in his thirties, he accepted that he could not continue denying his reality, started mobility training, got a cane, and eventually a guide dog.
The author is a poet and his writing is incredible. Listen to this: "I've entered Grand Central Station with guide dog Corky, my yellow Labrador. We stand uncertain while thousands of five o'clock commuters jostle around us. Beside them, Corky and I are in slow motion... (while) pickpockets and knife artists roam the crowds.... We don't know where we are, and though the world is dangerous, it's also haunting in its beauty. Even to a lost man with a speck of something like seeing, this minute here, just standing, taking in the air as a living circus, this is what tears of joy are for."
Or this: "My eyes dance in a private, rising field of silver threads, teeming greens, roses, and smoke. Such waltzing is not easy. Raised to know I was blind but taught to disavow it, I grew bent over like the dry tinder grass. I couldn't stand up proudly, nor could I retreat. I reflected my mother's complex bravery and denial and marched everywhere at dizzying speeds without a cane. Still, I remained ashamed of my blind self, that blackened dolmen."
A poetic lyrical book like this is "what tears of joy are for."
Stephen Kuusisto was born in the 50's, legally blind (he can see flashes of color, shifting shapes "by turns magical and disturbing"). Wishing to spare him the stigma and loneliness of being labelled handicapped, his parents taught him to deny his blindness, to try to "pass" as sighted. So he went to public school, rode a bike, tried to read with books pressed against his nose, faked "birdwatching" by repeating everything his friend said, creatively adding "intensifiers and adjectives." He went to college, traveled in Europe, negotiated cities and country.... wore telescopic glasses, suffered from terrible headaches, and repeatedly just barely escaped death.
Finally, in his thirties, he accepted that he could not continue denying his reality, started mobility training, got a cane, and eventually a guide dog.
The author is a poet and his writing is incredible. Listen to this: "I've entered Grand Central Station with guide dog Corky, my yellow Labrador. We stand uncertain while thousands of five o'clock commuters jostle around us. Beside them, Corky and I are in slow motion... (while) pickpockets and knife artists roam the crowds.... We don't know where we are, and though the world is dangerous, it's also haunting in its beauty. Even to a lost man with a speck of something like seeing, this minute here, just standing, taking in the air as a living circus, this is what tears of joy are for."
Or this: "My eyes dance in a private, rising field of silver threads, teeming greens, roses, and smoke. Such waltzing is not easy. Raised to know I was blind but taught to disavow it, I grew bent over like the dry tinder grass. I couldn't stand up proudly, nor could I retreat. I reflected my mother's complex bravery and denial and marched everywhere at dizzying speeds without a cane. Still, I remained ashamed of my blind self, that blackened dolmen."
A poetic lyrical book like this is "what tears of joy are for."
May 23, 2010
A lovely book about a man who fought his blindness for most of his life. Following his journey from "I can't admit I'm blind, I have to pass or no one will want to know me" and finally to "okay, I'm blind and I need help", it's beautifully written (he's a poet) and a great insight into visual impairments and the coping mechanisms people develop (photographic memory to memorise walking routes and books, pretending to be drunk/clumsy when running into things). I nearly cried when he finally gave in (after many near-death experiences) and got a cane, and then a dog.
Highly recommended book.
Highly recommended book.
August 5, 2024
It's weirdly rare that you get to hear blind people's experiences beyond how-to's of how we adapt everyday tasks. This hit home in a lot of ways - trying to blend in, shame and internalised ableism, when is safe to disclose your disability and leave yourself extremely vulnerable. It was also hopeful - Stephen's life is turned around after he confronts how playing the sighted man has limited his life and decides to get a guide dog. His freedom and independence is empowering, and it's not because he is dependent on Corky but works with her in tandem. There are some uncomfortable moments, but I appreciate how hopeful this is for other blind and visually impaired readers.
October 7, 2011
This is an absolutely amazing memoir of being legally blind since birth. The author was raised before the advent of the Americans with Disabilities Act, by parents who didn't want to acknowledge his blindness and by a relatively unsympathetic public school system. Despite those facts, he somehow madly rode his bicycle, charged through life, and achieved advanced degrees in poetry and literature. Written with both wry humor and some very real pain, one can't help but be amazed by the author's tenuous balance between navigating the world with sheer stubbornness and abject terror. It's a relief for the reader when, at midlife, he finally agrees to use a white cane. The final chapters are about getting a guide-dog (just before age 50). Lots in this book is scary for a sighted person to imagine, but there's humor and beauty as well.
[Kuusisto is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His follow-up memoir (copyright 2006 -- eight years after Planet of the Blind) is Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening.]
[Kuusisto is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His follow-up memoir (copyright 2006 -- eight years after Planet of the Blind) is Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening.]
November 2, 2015
A beautifully written and at times painfully honest memoir about the author's experience growing up legally blind with parents who did not or were not able to accept Kuusisto's limited and failing vision.
Not fully blind, not fully sighted, the author lives in what he describes as "the customs-house of the blind", a midway point between vision and blindness that makes possible his unique perception of the world.
He literally stumbled through the first couple of decades of life without a white cane, or adaptive equipment which no surprised, caused him to be an angry teen who struggled first with obesity and then with anorexia.
I had the pleasure of meeting the author as he spoke in Buffalo, NY for a speakers series and was as equally as gifted storyteller as author. I look forward to reading more of his work.
Not fully blind, not fully sighted, the author lives in what he describes as "the customs-house of the blind", a midway point between vision and blindness that makes possible his unique perception of the world.
He literally stumbled through the first couple of decades of life without a white cane, or adaptive equipment which no surprised, caused him to be an angry teen who struggled first with obesity and then with anorexia.
I had the pleasure of meeting the author as he spoke in Buffalo, NY for a speakers series and was as equally as gifted storyteller as author. I look forward to reading more of his work.
April 1, 2016
Stephen Kuusisto's autobiography is amazingly well written. The use of his poetical language contrasts with the horror of his impossible situation - taught by his parents to ignore his visual impairment.
It's his story as he stumbles through life often riding a bicycle, gaining degrees in poetry and literature and his bouts of anorexia and binge eating. Then how his life changes when he meets Corky and you see how important that friendship becomes.
It's his story as he stumbles through life often riding a bicycle, gaining degrees in poetry and literature and his bouts of anorexia and binge eating. Then how his life changes when he meets Corky and you see how important that friendship becomes.
June 16, 2009
This is an inspiring memoir about the author's blindness. How he "passes" as a sighted person for much of his life is both amazing and torturing to consider, and finally his acceptance of himself as he is led me to think about how much we can learn from his account.
April 23, 2010
Loved the poetic descriptions of a world that is felt and heard more than seen. Insightful.
September 2, 2018
This is a remarkable memoir for many reasons. The author, Stephen Kuusisto, is blind -- but this book is full of visual imagery, imagery which attempts -- for the most part, successfully - to allow the reader to see the world as he sees it. Kalleidoscope colors and shapes, shadows, and often details we sighted readers can recognize from our own experiences, come together to shape his physical world on the page. I found myself wondering how on earth someone who has been blind his whole life could paint such vivid, colorful pictures in words. Amazing.
It's likewise amazing that the author survived his childhood and early adulthood. Both he and his mother refused to accept his blindness. Kuusisto went to the same schools his sighted friends attended; rode bicycles; even got behind the wheel of a car. Reckless? Determined to live a full life? You decide. I think it was both. I'm glad he survived to give us this book, because it is the first book to fully depict for me not only the difficulties of living as a blind person in a world designed by and for the sighted, but the deep and utter loneliness of such a life. The author's refusal for over 25 years to accept his own disability made it all the more lonely for him, as he couldn't live honestly with himself until he finally, in desperation, realized that he needed help. He writes, "Then I call the telephone operator and ask for the number for the New York State Commission for the Blind. I need help walking. I've needed help all my life. It's that simple." This is a recognition long in coming, but one which opens Mr. Kuusisto to a life that's far closer to the one he has wanted than the one he has had while refusing to accept his blindness.
The second part of the book, in which Kuusisto learns to navigate with a cane and to train with his first guide dog is quite touching, amusing, and made me want to cheer aloud for him and for Corky, the labrador retriever who becomes his partner. I could feel the hope and relief and joy leap from the pages of this section.
The author is a lover and student of literature, and literary allusions are frequent and sometimes a little obscure for the non-literature major. No matter. It's easy to read right by these allusions and still understand and identify with the experience they are used to describe.
I highly recommend this book, if for no other reason than its readers can more thoughtfully and respectfully respond to that person with the cane they meet on the sidewalk or in the museum. This book put me on the planet of the blind, and I am changed by having been there.
It's likewise amazing that the author survived his childhood and early adulthood. Both he and his mother refused to accept his blindness. Kuusisto went to the same schools his sighted friends attended; rode bicycles; even got behind the wheel of a car. Reckless? Determined to live a full life? You decide. I think it was both. I'm glad he survived to give us this book, because it is the first book to fully depict for me not only the difficulties of living as a blind person in a world designed by and for the sighted, but the deep and utter loneliness of such a life. The author's refusal for over 25 years to accept his own disability made it all the more lonely for him, as he couldn't live honestly with himself until he finally, in desperation, realized that he needed help. He writes, "Then I call the telephone operator and ask for the number for the New York State Commission for the Blind. I need help walking. I've needed help all my life. It's that simple." This is a recognition long in coming, but one which opens Mr. Kuusisto to a life that's far closer to the one he has wanted than the one he has had while refusing to accept his blindness.
The second part of the book, in which Kuusisto learns to navigate with a cane and to train with his first guide dog is quite touching, amusing, and made me want to cheer aloud for him and for Corky, the labrador retriever who becomes his partner. I could feel the hope and relief and joy leap from the pages of this section.
The author is a lover and student of literature, and literary allusions are frequent and sometimes a little obscure for the non-literature major. No matter. It's easy to read right by these allusions and still understand and identify with the experience they are used to describe.
I highly recommend this book, if for no other reason than its readers can more thoughtfully and respectfully respond to that person with the cane they meet on the sidewalk or in the museum. This book put me on the planet of the blind, and I am changed by having been there.
September 16, 2023
A thing of delicate, miraculous beauty; and an incredibly rich story both despite and because of its brevity. What is striking about this particular memoir that it is, in many ways, one of linear progress, from a childhood and early adulthood of shame to one of pride and self-determination. Yet, it also very much was not a linear story, and engaged in a continuous dialectical pattern: Kuusisto faces an obstacle, attempts (with varying success) to subordinate his blindness to his own will, moves forward, and the cycle repeats. (Honestly, one of the best surprises of this book is how extensively Kuusisto discusses psychiatric disability (primarily depression and eating disorders( in conjunction with his blindness).
What could be considered a turning point of the text, when he contacts the national federation for the blind, is not so much a guarantee of ease and community, but a necessary, yet complex new way of experiencing life as an “out” blind person. I found this depiction of finally addressing disability after decades of willful refusal to be honest, and quite vulnerable to admit: Kuusisto approaches ableism, external and internal, in an informed, measured way, and does not take for granted the inevitability of “healing” or “self-acceptance.”
I could say a million things about this book — the genuine beauty of its language and the impeccable placement of intertextual work and literary research, the poetic fragments which offer sighted readers a glimpse into his kaleidoscopic world, the innovative, place-making signifiers he devises to illustrate the rich sensory landscape outside the realm of vision. Kuusisto has done a great job of welcoming outsiders into his planet of words and stories, while intimately documenting a life too long unmoored from the comfort that a community and a guide dog would bring.
What could be considered a turning point of the text, when he contacts the national federation for the blind, is not so much a guarantee of ease and community, but a necessary, yet complex new way of experiencing life as an “out” blind person. I found this depiction of finally addressing disability after decades of willful refusal to be honest, and quite vulnerable to admit: Kuusisto approaches ableism, external and internal, in an informed, measured way, and does not take for granted the inevitability of “healing” or “self-acceptance.”
I could say a million things about this book — the genuine beauty of its language and the impeccable placement of intertextual work and literary research, the poetic fragments which offer sighted readers a glimpse into his kaleidoscopic world, the innovative, place-making signifiers he devises to illustrate the rich sensory landscape outside the realm of vision. Kuusisto has done a great job of welcoming outsiders into his planet of words and stories, while intimately documenting a life too long unmoored from the comfort that a community and a guide dog would bring.
June 27, 2023
Blind people come in as many varieties as the sighted. Kuusisto tries to hide his blindness well into his thirties. He’d run, ride a bicycle, collide with objects and be taken for drunk. He’d share a wild lifestyle with sighted friends. How he manages to survive into mature adulthood seems a miracle. To read, he would hold a book an inch from his nose and use a magnifying glass. His good eye would last twenty minutes, but struggling as he does, he graduates with honors from school after majoring in literature.
After pretending to see the sights after his visit to Europe, he eventually comes to his senses and gains the courage and self-esteem to use a cane, which opens up a new world of freedom. But what opens up an even greater world of freedom is when he gets a seeing eye dog. Today he also realizes his dream of being gainfully employed.
Kuusisto tells us what he sees, the prejudice and favors he faces, the pain and headaches he suffers, and the poetry that runs through his mind. Poetry, likewise, runs through his writing.
You may know a blind person or two, but each one is different with different experiences, and what Kuuisisto shares with the reader is well worth the insight gained.
After pretending to see the sights after his visit to Europe, he eventually comes to his senses and gains the courage and self-esteem to use a cane, which opens up a new world of freedom. But what opens up an even greater world of freedom is when he gets a seeing eye dog. Today he also realizes his dream of being gainfully employed.
Kuusisto tells us what he sees, the prejudice and favors he faces, the pain and headaches he suffers, and the poetry that runs through his mind. Poetry, likewise, runs through his writing.
You may know a blind person or two, but each one is different with different experiences, and what Kuuisisto shares with the reader is well worth the insight gained.
April 13, 2023
I listened to this book as a mom of a almost-2-yr-old with low vision. I really enjoyed the opening chapters and the last few chapters, but I felt it was a little muddled in the middle (which maybe was the point, since he had a challenging few years in teenage/early adulthood years). There are several quotes in here that I would love to write down and keep with me forever, so I may be buying a physical copy of this book at some point. Much respect for the author and overcoming the ableism he has faced!
November 1, 2023
Such a powerful memoir!
March 18, 2018
An inspiring testimony which takes us into the terrifying experience of blindness. Everybody believes it is terrifying, but once you start digging and navigating deeply into the story, you find it as a great lesson that takes you through unimaginable levels of emphaty and understanding. The experience of blindness becomes a very touching reality filled with hope and a promising future for those who believe that hope its the protagonist and key to success for human beings in a constant search of their best self-version.
The relationship developed between Stephen and Corky (his guide dog) is beautiful, letting us explore how important a dog can become in the development of a blind person's life quality. The dog was very valuable for Stephen, in the same way Corky became an unvaluable and trascendental part of Stephen's life.
An unforgettable book, that captivates your heart and soul and that makes you see the importance and value of what seems to be little things, that in the end, become great details of life.
A must-read for everybody! A master-piece were love, challenge, overcoming adversity and becoming a hero for yourself (and the ones sourrounding you) exposes naturally along the evolution of this beautiful message and reality of life!
The relationship developed between Stephen and Corky (his guide dog) is beautiful, letting us explore how important a dog can become in the development of a blind person's life quality. The dog was very valuable for Stephen, in the same way Corky became an unvaluable and trascendental part of Stephen's life.
An unforgettable book, that captivates your heart and soul and that makes you see the importance and value of what seems to be little things, that in the end, become great details of life.
A must-read for everybody! A master-piece were love, challenge, overcoming adversity and becoming a hero for yourself (and the ones sourrounding you) exposes naturally along the evolution of this beautiful message and reality of life!
April 2, 2016
Cieco è uno che non vede, ma ci sono moltissimi modi di non vedere, e il buio può essere pieno di colori cangianti come l'arcobaleno e forme come nuvole nel vento. Un mondo meraviglioso ma incompatibile con la vita di ogni giorno, con lo studio, con i viaggi, con la spesa. Eppure fin da piccolo Stephen cerca di vivere come un vedente, sfidando la sorte ad ogni attraversamento di strada, ad ogni viaggio, mentendo a tutti e soprattutto a se stesso, e provocandosi ferite e pene, soprattutto psicologiche.
Finché un banale incidente, che compromette la sua pur marginale capacità di visione lo costringerà a venir a patti con la sua disabilità, ad imparare ad usare il bastione bianco e metterà sulla sua strada Corky, la star dei cani guida.
Bella autobiografia, in cui l'autore non si fa sconti, come spesso accate in questo genere.
Finché un banale incidente, che compromette la sua pur marginale capacità di visione lo costringerà a venir a patti con la sua disabilità, ad imparare ad usare il bastione bianco e metterà sulla sua strada Corky, la star dei cani guida.
Bella autobiografia, in cui l'autore non si fa sconti, come spesso accate in questo genere.
August 6, 2013
I read this book to help me get a (small) sense of what it's like to be blind. It was my after-hours book down at the National Beep Baseball Association World Series, and it gave me some great stuff to chew on. Kuusisto is especially smart about the patronizing attitude with which many treat the blind, and, then again, the necessary help he's received.
A few baseball-specific lines were especially welcome as I considered all these guys playing ball:
“I hear wasps striking windows, and a hand mower, and somewhere far off a radio tuned to a baseball game."
“Listening to baseball, I drift above the green shell of Fenway Park, the blind boy in his dirigible, newly arrived from provinces unheard of since the age of the pharaohs. I eat apples in the dark and spend the entire day alone.”
A few baseball-specific lines were especially welcome as I considered all these guys playing ball:
“I hear wasps striking windows, and a hand mower, and somewhere far off a radio tuned to a baseball game."
“Listening to baseball, I drift above the green shell of Fenway Park, the blind boy in his dirigible, newly arrived from provinces unheard of since the age of the pharaohs. I eat apples in the dark and spend the entire day alone.”
April 10, 2016
A beautiful novel depicting a man's reluctance to accept his visual impairment and the struggles he faced throughout life. Exceptional, both as an autobiography and a coming of age novel in its own right. It's laced with stunning imagery and description that leaves you in disbelief that the author couldn't see what he wrote about and leaves you baffled that sighted people often miss the everyday beauty that he so effectively captured in words. The novel has a quality that I'd be tempted to call pretension had it not been so in keeping with the lyrical prose of the book. The scene with the guide dog had a wonderfully heart-rendering simplicity that needed no elaboration or famous quotation to enhance it. A definite must-read for anyone who needs a reminder not to take sight for granted.
February 12, 2017
2,5 stars.
I'm a little disappointed because I expected to read something very new to me and something interesting.
But no. This book is pretty much like every other "oh, so artistic" book with all its weird methaphors and poem extracts.
For an autobiography this was (in my opinion) too dull and slow to read, which is sad because visual impairment/blindness is a very interesting topic.
Kuusisto is a very talented writer and I'd enjoy his way of writing in any other sort of literature. I would've rated this book 4 out of 5 ONLY if he would've cut out all the lengthy rambling.
I'm a little disappointed because I expected to read something very new to me and something interesting.
But no. This book is pretty much like every other "oh, so artistic" book with all its weird methaphors and poem extracts.
For an autobiography this was (in my opinion) too dull and slow to read, which is sad because visual impairment/blindness is a very interesting topic.
Kuusisto is a very talented writer and I'd enjoy his way of writing in any other sort of literature. I would've rated this book 4 out of 5 ONLY if he would've cut out all the lengthy rambling.
February 18, 2015
This is an excellent memoir. I have only good things to say about the way Kuusisto makes the reader experience something close to blindness with his descriptive and mood-setting skills. His book is thoughtful and searching, and he's endearingly honest. If you are a poet or writer of any kind, you will find this book even more interesting than will others who are not writers, but it's a winner either way. Kuusisto is smart, and he crafts exquisite prose. I now want to read his poetry as well.
December 4, 2015
Lyrical, insightful and deeply personal, this book is a work of art. The author is brutally honest, even sharing his bouts with binge eating, then anorexia as well as trichotillomania when anxious. The bond between a once-fearful man who tried to keep his blindness a secret and his guide dog, Corky, is lovely.
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February 3, 2009I learned a lot about being blind, and about being Steve Kuusisto. This book is so beautiful and gut wrenching. REally heartbreaking, but then has a happy ending.
December 31, 2023
Blind people come in as many varieties as the sighted. Kuusisto tries to hide his blindness well into his thirties. He’d run, ride a bicycle, collide with objects and be taken for drunk. He’d share a wild lifestyle with sighted friends. How he manages to survive into mature adulthood seems a miracle. To read, he would hold a book an inch from his nose and use a magnifying glass. His good eye would last twenty minutes, but struggling as he does, he graduates with honors from school after majoring in literature.
After pretending to see the sights after his visit to Europe, he eventually comes to his senses and gains the courage and self-esteem to use a cane, which opens up a new world of freedom. But what opens up an even greater world of freedom is when he gets a seeing eye dog. Today he also realizes his dream of being gainfully employed.
Kuusisto tells us what he sees, the prejudice and favors he faces, the pain and headaches he suffers, and the poetry that runs through his mind. Poetry, likewise, runs through his writing.
You may know a blind person or two, but each one is different with different experiences, and what Kuuisisto shares with the reader is well worth the insight gained.
After pretending to see the sights after his visit to Europe, he eventually comes to his senses and gains the courage and self-esteem to use a cane, which opens up a new world of freedom. But what opens up an even greater world of freedom is when he gets a seeing eye dog. Today he also realizes his dream of being gainfully employed.
Kuusisto tells us what he sees, the prejudice and favors he faces, the pain and headaches he suffers, and the poetry that runs through his mind. Poetry, likewise, runs through his writing.
You may know a blind person or two, but each one is different with different experiences, and what Kuuisisto shares with the reader is well worth the insight gained.
March 29, 2020
This book wasn't for me. Though the story itself is interesting, I'm not a fan of the style. Kuusisto is a poet and the book is too ...... literary? .... for me. Too formal. Filled with lots of poem snippets and references that I don't know so couldn't connect with.
The book describes his experience with his blindness. He has a very partial vision condition where his eyes move independently and roam all over the place. He sees everything in a smoosh of color and shadow; he just doesn't know if the dark is a tree, a person or just a shadow. He describes how difficult it was for him to function in the sighted world, all the time not admitting his blindness. In fact he didn't begin to admit publicly and even to himself that he was blind till he was in his 30s. He just went barreling along, pretending.
The only part of the book that I enjoyed were the 20 pages or so about getting a guide dog. Those descriptions were clear and unambiguous and delightful.
#BooklistQueen, #ReadHarder2020 #Popsugar2020 reading challenge categories
The book describes his experience with his blindness. He has a very partial vision condition where his eyes move independently and roam all over the place. He sees everything in a smoosh of color and shadow; he just doesn't know if the dark is a tree, a person or just a shadow. He describes how difficult it was for him to function in the sighted world, all the time not admitting his blindness. In fact he didn't begin to admit publicly and even to himself that he was blind till he was in his 30s. He just went barreling along, pretending.
The only part of the book that I enjoyed were the 20 pages or so about getting a guide dog. Those descriptions were clear and unambiguous and delightful.
#BooklistQueen, #ReadHarder2020 #Popsugar2020 reading challenge categories
May 31, 2018
*****SPOILER*****
(I put in the Spoiler Alert only because I don't like to know what happens at the end of the story of a book I haven't read yet, even though some people have already mentioned it.)
This was an eye-opening (excuse the pun) account that helps us see into the world of blind people. Much more empathy is called for from the general public. I'm so sorry this man endured so much bullying and meanness because of his condition. Over and over again I said right out loud "What is wrong with people!" as I was listening to this book.
Stephen is good at describing what he sees, which is very little and very distorted from what we see. I'm glad he can see at least the small amount that he does. Corky, his guide dog, is a delight.
I actually donated to guidingeyes.org, the organization that trained Corky and where Mr. Kuusisto worked as of the end of the story. I hope he's still there and enjoying life.
December 1, 2023
This is a memoir with a difference. I would recommend it to anybody while I happen to have a long-standing friend whose vision has become impaired. This is presumably why I bought the book, but failed to read it straight away, discovered it just now languishing on my bookshelf.
It is quite astonishing that the author did not want to be blind and pretended for most of his life that he was 'normal', went to school and college as a sighted person, and only at the age of 39, due to a mishap, discovered that a completely new life began when he acquired a guide dog.
His prose irritated me at first because he is very American but later I grew to admire it because he manages to squeeze some humour even out of dire situations. Some scenes I am likely to remember for a long time.
It is quite astonishing that the author did not want to be blind and pretended for most of his life that he was 'normal', went to school and college as a sighted person, and only at the age of 39, due to a mishap, discovered that a completely new life began when he acquired a guide dog.
His prose irritated me at first because he is very American but later I grew to admire it because he manages to squeeze some humour even out of dire situations. Some scenes I am likely to remember for a long time.
March 31, 2020
An amazing, at times rather harrowing, memoir of the life of Stephen Kuusisto who became blind at birth. Throughout his childhood and until he was late 30s, with his extremely limited vision, he worked hard to pass as a sighted person. How he eventually achieved what he did is beyond me. A rare look into the life of a person who is legally blind and how he navigates the world without much-needed assistance. This is not an easy read as you follow his life, but the reward in the end is great. This book was written 17 years before Have Dog, Will Travel.
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