THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND

Musings from the border between the countries of the sighted and the blind.

While he was in college, journalist and podcaster Leland, an editor at the Believer, was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye condition leading to blindness. As he began writing this book, 20-some years later, his vision had deteriorated to the point that he sums up his status to a new blind acquaintance as “legally blind, using a cane, but still reading print.” This memoir recounts the author’s attempt to navigate the titular land, which, for him, is “no longer a legendary, proverbial sci-fi country [but] instead…a real place, populated by real people.” He continues: “My hope is that…the sighted reader [will] likewise discover the largely invisible terrain of blindness, as well as other ways of living and thinking they might not have previously considered.” His exploration touches on cultural perceptions of blindness (“a tour through the Western canon,” he remarks with some acidity, “offers a highlight reel of blind abjection”); the socioeconomics of blindness; assistive technologies; learning to read braille as an adult; the elusiveness of treatment for RP, and more. In the process, Leland provides both fascinating capsule histories of the topics he’s pondering, as with a survey of the disability rights movement, and searching glimpses into his own existential struggle to understand what it means for him to be blind. A discussion of racism and homophobia within the National Federation of the Blind, a leading advocacy group, reveals some uncomfortable truths. (Though much of Leland’s exploration is mediated by the NFB, he takes care to explain that its advocacy has its detractors.) When the author gets personal, he does so with such honesty and vulnerability that by the end, readers will understand when he concludes, “The process of retinal degeneration has turned out to be one of the most generative experiences of my life.”

Emotional but never sentimental, this quest for insight delivers for its readers.