Late in December, I was looking for my first memoir of 2024 and I came across Leland’s memoir on some online magazine’s curated list of memoirs. Among all the memoirs on that list this one stood out to me. One obvious reason why Leland’s memoir stood out is because it examines blindness and disability. That’s not a subject memoirs typically examine. Most memoirs are stories about people who’ve done extraordinary things. So I was intrigued by the premise of this memoir. It’s about one ordinary man grappling with a fairly common disability- blindness.
The Country of the Blind is about much more than blindness and disability. It is a meditation on family, marriage, and community. It is also an education in the history, language, politics, and culture of the blind. The author’s style is easy to read, he doesn’t take himself too seriously- for instance here’s a quote from the book, “Elon Musk may be excited about self-driving cars, but he’s not half as pumped as most blind people I’ve met”. And the overall organization of the book was good as well.
One of the themes the author explores is that of uncertainty and the anxiety that comes with that sense of limbo. The constant doubting that begins with the words “When” or “If”. The condition of being robbed of the stabilty of a surefire answer. It leads him to question his identity and sense of self over and over again. But, eventually he is on his way to make peace with, accept and go on living with the facts of uncertainty.
I began reading this on the 26th of December, so it took me around three months to complete it. Now, that I’ve finished it, I’m so glad I did. Because I distinctly remember a part in the book- in the second quarter- that made me want to stop reading. There were a couple of reasons for this. At that point in the book, Leland goes into specifics about his declining vision, he discusses disability more broadly, he highlights several painpoints that make aspects of everyday life less accessible. At this point in the book, I was thinking to myself, “Why am I learning about blindness and disability?”, “Reading about this is making me sad”, “I don’t even have anyone in my life who deals with vision loss”. Despite these discouraging thoughts, I convinced myself it would be ignorant to not learn about the predicament of a significant population of the world- that I or a loved one might someday be a part of. A strategy that helped me carry on with this memoir was having a lighter, faster paced book on the side. So if you are interested in reading this one, just know that it isn’t going to knock your socks of with tales of bravery or motivate you to live your best life. But it might just help you empathize better with people around you, renew the sense of gratitude for your life, open your mind to perspectives you could not imagine otherwise, and leave your heart a little bit broken but also a little more open.
Here are some of my highlights.
- “It feels at once catastrophic and commonplace- like reading an article about civilization’s imminent collapse from the climate crisis, then setting the article down and going for a pleasant bike ride through a mild spring morning.”
- “As painful as the extreme might be in these situations- severing the relationship, forgetting your homeland, mourning your dead- finality also offers relief that ambiguity denies us.”
- “I’m blind,” he responded to his white acquaintance, “and I don’t see color either- but I hear ignorance vividly. You can’t replace four hundred years of oppression and injustice by saying ‘I don’t see color.’
- Racism, he said, “is based on ignorance- through hate and dislike.” But the discrimination he dealth with as a blind person “was ignorance- but through love.”
- “The half-smile is slight, just enough, barely apparent.” Wearing a half smile, she told her interviewer, means “meeting absolutely everything and everybody, always, with equanimity and friendliness.”