Sight Unseen

By Georgina Kleege

Book Overview

This elegantly written book offers an unexpected and unprecedented account of blindness and sight. Legally blind since the age of eleven, Georgina Kleege draws on her experiences to offer a detailed testimony of visual impairment--both her own view of the world and the world's view of the blind. "I hope to turn the reader's gaze outward, to say not only 'Here's what I see' but also 'Here's what you see, ' to show both what's unique and what's universal," Kleege writes.
Kleege describes the negative social status of the blind, analyzes stereotypes of the blind that have been perpetuated by movies, and discusses how blindness has been portrayed in literature. She vividly conveys the visual experience of someone with severely impaired sight and explains what she can see and what she cannot (and how her inability to achieve eye contact--in a society that prizes that form of connection--has affected her). Finally she tells of the various ways she reads, and the freedom she felt when she stopped concealing her blindness and acquired skills, such as reading braille, as part of a new, blind identity. Without sentimentality or clich s, Kleege offers us the opportunity to imagine life without sight.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300076800
• ISBN13: 9780300076806
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A Book Sighted People should read to Understand Blindness

I have just read this book (BTW for the reader who wanted it in audio format- check out NLS (National Library Service- or your state Library for the Blind) as this is how I read this book). I can relate to what the author goes through- as I'm also legally blind. However, unlike the author I was never fully sighted so I appreciate her compairson to being "sighted" as opposed to beling blind. Like the author I do have some useable vision and employ the same sort of adaptive devices she does. I believe this book could educate people that being blind does not mean you see nothing -- only 10% of people who are blind see nothing at all. There are varing degrees of blindness, and I think the author does an excellent job of conveaying this to her readers.

Mesmerizing, intelligent, and graceful

This book explodes with insights, both personal and social. It is the best description I've read of how a legally blind person negotiates the world, from reading a written text to learning braille, to confronting prejudices that insist upon a distinction between legally ("not really blind") and totally blind. The essay that takes the author to the home of Louis Braille, weaving in his poignant story with her own, is nothing short of remarkable. It's no surprise that these page-turning essays have won awards.

Imperative reading material.

Any professor who teaches courses on the issue of disabilities should rank "Sight Unseen" as a REQUIRED TEXT, and one that will appear on the course final. I wish my professor had this text in her possession when I took her Senior Seminar on Disability Discourses at U. C. Berkeley. Ms. Kleege takes the sightest belief that blindness on any level is pitiable, and exposes this septic ignorance with intelligence, humor, class and style. This text is Nobel Prize material.

A discerning meditation, both poignant & challenging

Georgina Kleege has written one of the best books of the year on any subject, and one of the best books ever on sight and disability. Alternating between analysis and autobiography, Kleege moves us through our cultural assumptions about blindness and sight in a provocative--even inspiring--manner.The impact the book makes is astonishing. For instance, I'll never use vocabulary in quite the same way after reading this book; I find myself wanting to describe it as "illuminating" or "offering insight." That these words are the first to come to mind supports Kleege's thesis; our culture's reliance on sight--and its unjustified fear of blindness--is so woven into the very fabric of language that we often don't recognize the power it has over us. This book has given me a gift: now I find myself being more thoughtful in choosing the exact image or idea I want to communicate. I'll no longer settle for just any "sighted" word that first comes to mind, unless it's the most appropriate for the context.I like the book's ability to move easily from one style of analysis to another. Kleege has a knack for analyzing a film or book or play in an academic mode, and yet without the usual jargon. For example, her thoughts on the Oedipus myth are quite compelling, as is her take on films like "Children of a Lesser God."She also includes highly personal essays that exhibit the same rigor of analysis and yet speak to the heart. Her account of learning the Braille system and then visiting Braille's birthplace in France is powerful and moving. Her descriptions of losing her sight in girlhood--as the daughter of two successful visual artists--is equally riveting.And her medical and scientific explanations of sight and blindness interested me as much as her experience of visiting the art museum to see her favorite paintings, and her memories of playing Helen Keller in a school play. Kleege offers a rich discussion unmatched by other books on this topic.This book is a must-read and deserves a wide audience. I'll be giving copies as holiday gifts this year.

LUCID AND EXTRAORDINARY

LUCID AND EXTRAORDINARY -- a book that will make all readers appreciate deeply what an imperfect endeavor seeing is, no matter what one's degree of sightedness. Under Georgina Kleege's careful scrutiny, even the plainest experience of vision is revealed both for its fundamental graininess and resulting fluid beauty.