Sight Unseen [Hardcover]

Ms. Georgina Kleege (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 1999

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 worlds view of the blind. "I hope to turn the reader's gaze outward, to say, not only Heres 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 cliches, Kleege offers us the opportunity to imagine life without sight.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this blend of memoir and pointed cultural criticism, novelist (Home for the Summer), essayist and translator Kleege describes how she has come to terms with being blind in a world that fears and stigmatizes blindness. In 1967, at the age of 11, she was diagnosed with macular degeneration, told there was no cure or hope of improvement and declared legally blind. So Kleege, who is able to discern some light, color, movement and form, learned to hide her impairment. In school, she memorized pages of text in anticipation of being asked to read aloud, and determined what school friends were seeing by their tone of voice. With erudition that only partially belies her fury, Kleege goes on to explore the cultural meanings of blindness, dismantling negative stereotypes about the blind, including those perpetuated by such Hollywood films as Wait Until Dark and The Paradine Case and novels such as Eden Close. She also contrasts her visual experiences with those of the fully sighted and explains how, as a writer for whom reading was central, she has developed workable reading techniques. Although she was discouraged from learning braille as a child because she had "too much sight," Kleege now considers it a useful and pleasurable supplement to recorded tapes and magnification devices. Although sometimes didactic, Kleege gives readers an enlightening look at life with marginal eyesight. Agent, Mildred Marmur. (Mar.) FYI: Readers interested in this title might also enjoy Planet of the Blind by Stephen Kuusisto.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Novelist and essayist Kleege sees less than ten percent of what a normally sighted person does. Her brooding "coming out narrative" consists of eight essays detailing the experiences of a legally blind person in a sighted world. Kleege first considers the negative cultural attitudes toward blindness and how the disability is depicted in films and literature. She describes in bruising detail how and what she is able to see and recalls the years that she and her disappointed parents (both artists) spent concealing her condition. In the final chapters, Kleege describes the methods she uses to read, including recorded books and Braille, a recently acquired skill that she feels has allowed her to accept her condition and "announce my blindness without apology." Although a sense of unfairness underpins this intense memoir, Kleege's skill at articulating her personal struggle does enable one to appreciate what a blind person "sees." Recommended for most libraries and anyone associated with the visually impaired.?Carol Ann McAllister, Coll. of William & Mary Lib., Williamsburg, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (March 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300076800
• ISBN-13: 978-0300076806
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #795,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A discerning meditation, both poignant & challenging, August 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sight Unseen (Hardcover)

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.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sight Unseen- Insight and Issues, March 25, 2006

By 

Karin Dru (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sight Unseen (Hardcover)

Like many people who have read this book, I am legally blind. It was recommended to me by a friend who has very good vision. Comparing notes with her was particularly educational. The perspectives of a sighted person and a blind person on the text turn out to be not all that different.

This book has incredible ups and downs. First- the ups.
Kleege's description of what a blind person sees is incredible, perhaps the best I have ever read. People who haven't had to worry about it are under such misconceptions. A lot of people think that if you can see- kind of- that what you see is a blur. Even the cover of this book appears to tell us the same thing, but that's far from true for everyone.

The author makes the point that the designation of what constitutes legal blindness really was a pretty random decision. Who says 20/20 is normal? How many people do you know who use some kind of correction? Given that, how normal can it possibly be? Also, just because someone is legally blind, they may use their vision so efficiently that you don't know until they tell you that there's anything different about them. Ms. Kleege reports this experience in her own life. Conversely, someone who is legally blind may not use their vision at all. Also, her descriptions of the process of making sense of visual information is well done and should help to explain to people who don't know exactly how sight works, how different it can be for various people.

My favorite of the points made by this book, however, has got to be that the fact that you can see something, doesn't mean you're not blind; doesn't make it not a good idea to learn Braille. Many of us with some useable sight were refused this tool as children. Frankly, if you can't read print at all without pain, this encourages illiteracy. Kleege is spreading the word that Braille is NOT a foreign language- it's just another way to percieve the alphabet that we already know. She raises the question of whether audio books constitute reading in the same way that reading print or Braille do. (given that it stimulates different parts of your brain, I'd argue no, although like Kleege, I think it's a useful tool at times.)

Now for the downs.
Kleege can be really disparaging of sighted people. There are subtle and less subtle digs and jabs all over the book. She puts words into the mouths of passing strangers, extending a real encounter into a possible outcome, making assumptions about what the sighted person would have said if she'd said something different, herself. Honestly not every sighted person is a complete jerk, or ignorant about how sight works. She asserts that a mother will stop a child from staring at a blind person because if you don't look at something unpleasant, it will go away. No, mothers do that because it's very rude to stare! My sighted friend was really offended by the middle of the book and actually exclaimed "well, so sorry I can SEE!"

Her take on Oedipus' blindness, I thought, was overly dramatic. Kleege regards it as symbolic castration, setting the stage for the way people percieve blindness to this day. Frankly, Oedipus wasn't Freudian until Freud. If Oedipus had meant to castrate himself, given that this is a classical story and they didn't mince words- he would have.

I also thought some of her arguments with modern cinema were perhaps a bit harsh. Not that really bad stereotypes don't exist. Movies like "Jennifer 8", portraying blind people as needful of institutionalisation and completely helpless when confronted by a sighted crazy, are a real problem. The blind aren't the only people stereotyped in Hollywood, though. One could argue that the heroine was helpless as much because she was a woman in a horror movie as that she was blind. Also, wasn't the protagonist in "Scent of a Woman" more stereotypically bachelorish than blind? True, a lot of movies were clearly directed by people who have never met a blind person. however, the unmoving stare empolyed by many film directors to typify the blind, which Kleege finds so offensive- exists. If one has been blind since birth, one sometimes lacks body language, never having observed it. If one lacks eyes, why blink to moisten them? Sometimes one forgets.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book, even though I periodically wanted to yell "OH, come ON! Get over it!" I'd reccommend it to the blind who have not found anyone with whom to relate, lately, or the sighted who want to understand.

And one more thing- anyone who gets embarrassed because they just said "Hey, look at this!" to a blind person. . . It's ok. We do it too.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book Sighted People should read to Understand Blindness, February 21, 2002

By 

Catherine Glass "Katey Glass" (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sight Unseen (Hardcover)

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.