For the Benefit of Those Who See: Dispatches from the World of the Blind - Softcover

Mahoney, Rosemary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316043435 ISBN 13: 9780316043434

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2015

Synopsis

"In this intelligent and humane book, Rosemary Mahoney writes of people who are blind....She reports on their courage and gives voice, time and again, to their miraculous dignity."--Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree
In the tradition of Oliver Sacks's The Island of the Colorblind, Rosemary Mahoney tells the story of Braille Without Borders, the first school for the blind in Tibet, and of Sabriye Tenberken, the remarkable blind woman who founded the school. Fascinated and impressed by what she learned from the blind children of Tibet, Mahoney was moved to investigate further the cultural history of blindness. As part of her research, she spent three months teaching at Tenberken's international training center for blind adults in Kerala, India, an experience that reveals both the shocking oppression endured by the world's blind, as well as their great resilience, integrity, ingenuity, and strength. By living among the blind, Rosemary Mahoney enables us to see them in fascinating close up, revealing their particular "quality of ease that seems to broadcast a fundamental connection to the world." Having read FOR THE BENEFIT OF THOSE WHO SEE, you will never see the world in quite the same way again.

About this title

About the Author

Rosemary Mahoney is the author of The Early Arrival of Dreams, a New York Times Notable Book; Whoredom in Kimmage, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff, a New York Times Notable Book; and two other books. She was a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow and is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award.

Review

"What makes For the Benefit of Those Who See especially absorbing is that it turns on Mahoney's greatest strength: her idiosyncratic and unblinking eye. When I finished this book, I returned to the world feeling that all my senses had been sharpened."-George Howe Colt, author of The Big House (finalist for The National Book Award in nonfiction)

"With her wonderfully sharp prose and great sense of humor and humanity, Rosemary Mahoney has written a riveting narrative that combines world-class reporting, science, history, and travel writing."-Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club

"A spiritual odyssey into the world of the blind....A beautiful meditation on human nature."-Kirkus (Starred Review)

"[a] sparkling exploration...when you finish [Mahoney's] book, walk outside and close your eyes. You just might meet the world again, startling, mysterious, new. - Lynn Darling, Oprah.com

"[Mahoney's] research is fascinating, her self-scrutiny refreshing and her prose just the right kind of gorgeous. In this wonderful book we discover along with the author that both sight and its absence come with burdens-and beauties." -Judith Stone, More.com

"Riveting...Compulsively readable...Mahoney's beautifully written narrative opens our eyes to the experience of blindness and offers fresh insight into human resilience and the way we view the world." -Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Book Page

"For The Benefit of Those Who See is a compassionate realization that seeing isn't the only path to knowing." -Bret McCabe, Johns Hopkins Magazine

"A vivid portrait of people and places...It's as if [Mahoney had] turned on the lights in a dark room, revealing how the world appears to those who experience it with their other four senses. The seeing reader will gasp in recognition and understanding, marveling at lives once hidden." -Karen Valby, Entertainment Weekly

"Mahoney's vision lends her books an uncanny quality that makes you really feel like you're with her. Weirdly, she says, she had never met a blind person. So Mahoney was apprehensive when she was assigned to write a profile of a woman running the first school for the blind in Tibet. Her experience there served as a prelude for a fuller immersion in the world of the blind, detailed in her new book, For the Benefit of Those Who See." -Arun Rath, NPR.org

"Mahoney's curiosity, inspired by her own 'morbid fear' of losing her sight, led her to investigate many aspects of blindness. Particularly fascinating are her accounts of the founding of the Perkins School for the Blind (now in Watertown) and her review of rare cases in which sight was restored-and not entirely welcome." -Suzanne Koven, Boston Globe

About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0316043435
• ISBN 13: 9780316043434
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 319