Susan D. (mom2nine) reviewed For the Benefit of Those Who See: Dispatches from the World of the Blind on + 342 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
Excellent, well researched book. Some reviews have stated that she gives too much physical detail, but I think that it is fair to say that many of us have had few if any encounters with blind people. Mahoney asks the questions that we would all like answers to. Although she gives a history of the treatment of blind people, her writing flows and her descriptions are very well written. "Sight is a slick and overbearing autocrat, trumpeting its prodigal knowledge and perceptions so forcefully that it drowns out the other, subtler senses. We go through our day semi-oblivious to a whole range of sensory information because we are distracted and enslaved by our eyes." p 79
Marcia C. reviewed For the Benefit of Those Who See: Dispatches from the World of the Blind on + 625 more book reviews
Absolutely amazing in the best sense. Two of the chapters are among the most mind-blowing I've read, ever.
In one, the author describes kids who have been at a Tibetan school for the blind for quite some time zooming around through Llasa better than the sighted visitor. In the other, the author describes in detail how helpless and despairing (not to mention in physical danger) she became in the pitch black when the electricity went out in her hut in rural India, while the blind kids coped just fine, of course.
She brings you vividly into the world of the blind, to the point that you can't help but admire rather than pity those portrayed in the book.
In one, the author describes kids who have been at a Tibetan school for the blind for quite some time zooming around through Llasa better than the sighted visitor. In the other, the author describes in detail how helpless and despairing (not to mention in physical danger) she became in the pitch black when the electricity went out in her hut in rural India, while the blind kids coped just fine, of course.
She brings you vividly into the world of the blind, to the point that you can't help but admire rather than pity those portrayed in the book.
