Reviews with content warning for Ableism - The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight

The Country of the Blind was an excellent mix of non-fiction, history, cultural exploration, personal reflection and commentary. It is a liminal memoir, as the author documents the pivot of his life between sighted and blind, and asks more questions than it answers - when does one become blind, what does it mean to transition away from visual sense and memory, how do our relationships change with disability, how does the world understand the capabilities of blind and low-vision folks and how do blind and low-vision folks want the world to understand.

I appreciated, in particular, the author's vulnerability in confronting his own internalized ableism alongside the ableism he and other blind folks experience in a predominantly sighted culture day-to-day. He has a unique entry point into community with other blind folks, and reflects at length on the slow progression of his blindness and how that keeps him between worlds indefinitely.

I particularly enjoyed The Makers chapter, learning about blind creatives and inventors and the many technologies (audiobooks, OCR, epub, and more) we owe to blind folks. As a sighted reader, I was fascinated to learn about the early history of audiobooks in particular, and appreciated how these historical reflections segwayed into accessibility tools and devices today. It's a direct reminder, too, that today's companies often invest in accessibility technology not out of a sense of altruism, but because they know they can apply them to broader uses, and we ignore their original use and intention as we adapt these technologies to the non-disabled.

The audiobook is narrated by the author, and I highly recommend the audio.

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imds's review against another edition

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3.5

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mxnjrees's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

A must read for anyone who wants to understand the modern experience of disability, or feel validated in their own interactions with oppressive systems. This book is impressively intersectional, touching on sexism, racism, religious, and other cultural overlap with the blind community. Leland writes with great insight, compassion, and clarity on a topic few authors have tried to tackle: a disability narrative with the nuances fully present, challenging, and affirming to anyone who's living with similar struggles and joys.

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mmccombs's review

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informative medium-paced

4.0

I enjoyed this book a lot! Reading about Andrew Leland’s experience as someone who is becoming blind but doesn’t feel as though he belongs in either the sighted or the blind world provided an interesting perspective. I definitely feel as though this is a book for sighted people, not for blind people, as it tackled a lot of internalized ableism and barriers for non-disabled people to viewing disabled people as people. I thought he tackled intersectionality well, though I think I’d like to read books by Black, disabled women to get that lived perspective. A solid entry into nonfiction about blindness!

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