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SUN AND SHADOW: The Autobiography of a Woman, Who Happens to Be Blind by Rose Resnick

SUN AND SHADOW: The Autobiography of a Woman, Who Happens to Be Blind

By

Pub Date: June 23rd, 1975
Publisher: Atheneum

There's very little shadow here--Rose Resnick, who started to go blind at the age of two (congenital glaucoma), would be the last to submit to the word handicap especially since she can read or write as well as anyone, in Braille. The life she made for herself, without the benefit of an Anne Sullivan, included a complete education well into the college level, a scholarship as a pianist which took her to Fontainebleau for a year, and study under a very great if very precarious teacher-composer, Rudy, with whom she had a complete if spotty relationship. The only resentment she ever felt was when others isolated or excluded her as a ""blink."" After a brief appearance on the concert stage, she went on to earn her living--sometimes a sketchy one--playing in nightclubs or on tour with her seeing-eye dog. Later in San Francisco, which she made her home, she started a camp for other blind youngsters where they did everything--swam, rode, played baseball; was instrumental in converting the obsolete institution Blindcraft into a larger Lighthouse, later administered by a quite horrible man; then went on to found and further the California League for the Handicapped. The remarkable thing about Miss Resnick's book is that she tells her story as if it were far less exceptional than it really is.