What Blind People Wish Sighted People Knew About Blindness by Harry Martin

[lightreads]

Nonfiction. Utter, unredeemable crap. Written for sighted people, and I can't tell if the author really is that stupid or if he's trying some not-so-clever PR. I particularly like the part where he explains how blind people show greater moral development, and how they are not subject to the sort of socialized judgmentalism that sighted people exercise. Because, you know, blind people are never racists, that's all a visual phenomenon based on appearance, didn't
you know? My absolute favorite moment came in a section where he points out a number of assumptions sighted people make (some of them even accurate) and quotes from letters written by blind people to describe them. He explains how frustrating it is to be spoken around ("what does your friend want to order?") and quotes from a letter that goes, "my husband is blind, and he finds it very offensive when people talk around him or for him." . . . yeah. Tragically not irony, either.