Customer Reviews

Sight Unseen

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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.

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.

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.

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.

I'd like to start this review by stating that I am a totally blind individual. Although this fact should not convey that I am an expert in writing about vision as is Mrs. Kleege, I wanted to set the stage before beginning my discussion of this book.

I found Ms. Kleege's writing to be academic yet never incomprehensible. Her personal anecdotes were very enjoyable to read. Although I have never seen, Kleege began losing her sight at the age of eleven as the result of macular degeneration. She describes in detail the degree of vision she has and how she is perceived by most people to be sighted because she can "fake it". "Sight Unseen" chronicles Kleege's gradual decision to drop the pretense in a sometimes frightened or hostile world that views sight as something essential.
Kleege explores how all of our culture, (language, movies, literature, ETC.), has served to paint a less-than flattering view of those without sight. The word "blind" has many negative connotations and is associated with sin, evil, darkness, ineptitude, and so much more. I did feel in some instances that Kleege was being overcritical of sighted individuals. By the way: all blind people say, "See you later," or, "It's great to see you". All of us are ordinary people created to make a difference. Sight or lack thereof should be of no consequence. Of course, I'm not naive, and I know advocacy is essential.
My favorite part of the book is Part 3, in which Kleege explores the joy of reading, (Braille and books on audio). I found myself laughing out loud and relating to her with every word in this section. Like her, I love the versatility of different readers narrating the same story, and the self-discoveries awaiting you with each new book that becomes available. Braille was my gateway to the world and broke my barriers of fear and shyness. The section where Kleege discusses her visit to the home of Louis Braille was particularly moving. And, like the author, I love to read in the dark.

The only other thing I'll say is that I did take umbrage to Kleege's criticism of Christ's healing of the blind men in Scripture. She implies that touching their eyes was a form of degradation. Quite the contrary. Christ gave those men back their dignity. In a culture that isolated the disabled and treated them with dirision, Christ broke all the social taboos and said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. Noone comes to the Father but through me" (John 14-6), and "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8-12).

This book is worth the read. Please give it a chance. God bless you all.

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.

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.

I have recently finished this disaster of a novel for a college honors course "Disability through Autobiography." While attempting to read this book, my frustration took over and in a couple of instances, resulted in the book being thrown across the room. Much of the book seems a criticism of those that are not blind as well as the depictions of the blind by those who are not blind, namely authors and Hollywood directors. I can think of a much better topic for a book than nit-picking at random quotes in movies, books, and social groups. Kleege seems to only show the ability for a blind person to criticize those who are not blind and may not completely understand what blindness is. Although I have taken many courses that focus intensely on accepting those with disablilities in society, I find it very difficult to accept severe cynicism no matter what disability the author may have.

Georgina Kleege, the blind author of _Sight Unseen_, speaks of her book as a kind of coming out narrative where she stops staging a sighted identity and accepts her blindness. Kleege describes her amazing experience dealing with blindness beginning at age 11 and details the ways she has adapted to living in a sighted world. Pretending to be sighted when you are blind poses an incredible challenge, but Kleege explains how the benefits outweigh any effort it takes to conceal blindness due to such a heavy stigma associated with the disability. However, even as she denied her blindness to others, Kleege has never viewed her disability as a punishment or cause for despair. It has not stopped her from becoming the successful writer and professor that she is, nor has it held her back from the activities she loves.
Kleege opens our minds to her world, and describes with vivid imagery what and how she sees. Her condition causes a block to her central vision, but allows her to distinguish between colors and make use of her peripheral vision. Kleege makes her readers aware of a great many fallacies surrounding blindness, and gives numerous examples of how movies and literature concerning blindness often perpetuate negative stereotypes. Her readers accompany her to an art museum, back in time when she was sighted, and to France where she found inspiration from Louis Braille's accomplishments.
The amazingly adapted author also invites her readers to try and imagine making use of their eyes the way she does on a daily basis. Her descriptions of viewing art and reading print evoked in my imagination a longing to temporarily share in her experience. I would have expected, however, the once sighted author to better understand the fear that sighted people have associated with blindness. The transition to permanent blindness is a great deal harder than just closing your eyes to simulate the disability. Kleege speaks only on behalf of her own blindness, and effectively captures the attention of her audience in helping them face and appreciate how a rich life without sight is possible.

Yes, this book LOOKS good! But HOW can my husband READ it when he is B-L-I-N-D? Does the author want only to appeal (SELL TO) the majority of the world which is sighted? Blind people NEED books like these but they MUST be A-U-D-I-O.