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A review by nsaphra
Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law by Haben Girma
4.0
This is such an intimate look at a very different kind of life. I felt like I have a better grasp of the challenges around having to constantly recontextualize social interactions because she doesn’t have enough detail to know someone’s tone or even simple cues around how others are responding. With the exception of sexist chore allocation growing up, she doesn’t describe prejudiced treatment except for ableism, but I am sure to some degree that’s because she misses social cues and comments not directed at her. She also describes technical details around how she accomplishes simple tasks or processes experiences like dancing. She clearly knows what sighted and hearing people are most curious about.
A while ago, a blind friend helped me move. I had a bunch of friends helping out, and they tried to avoid giving him any work. At one point, they were carrying furniture down stairs and he offered to walk backwards down the stairs while someone covered the upper end walking forwards, and they told him he should take the forwards end because it was “easier”! I was frustrated on his behalf and tried to point out that it wasn’t particularly hard for him to walk backwards, since he’s not going to have any more trouble seeing than if he were walking forwards. But everyone treated him—a physically strong person with years of developing blindness skills from childhood—like he didn’t know his own capabilities. This kind of issue comes up constantly in Haben’s memoir and she describes the frustration so well. I hope that some people will read it and come away trusting disabled people on the subject of their own capabilities, if they offer to help.
One last thing: I listened to Haben read on audiobook. Because of her limited hearing range, she learned to speak in a high pitched voice like a child. It took a few minutes getting used to, but she is engaging and expressive, a better narrator than many professionals and most memoirists. But I could see that, with people’s tendency to infantilize anyone with a disability they don’t have, that childlike voice probably reinforces infantilizing treatment.
A while ago, a blind friend helped me move. I had a bunch of friends helping out, and they tried to avoid giving him any work. At one point, they were carrying furniture down stairs and he offered to walk backwards down the stairs while someone covered the upper end walking forwards, and they told him he should take the forwards end because it was “easier”! I was frustrated on his behalf and tried to point out that it wasn’t particularly hard for him to walk backwards, since he’s not going to have any more trouble seeing than if he were walking forwards. But everyone treated him—a physically strong person with years of developing blindness skills from childhood—like he didn’t know his own capabilities. This kind of issue comes up constantly in Haben’s memoir and she describes the frustration so well. I hope that some people will read it and come away trusting disabled people on the subject of their own capabilities, if they offer to help.
One last thing: I listened to Haben read on audiobook. Because of her limited hearing range, she learned to speak in a high pitched voice like a child. It took a few minutes getting used to, but she is engaging and expressive, a better narrator than many professionals and most memoirists. But I could see that, with people’s tendency to infantilize anyone with a disability they don’t have, that childlike voice probably reinforces infantilizing treatment.