Blindness/People with Disabilities

Non-Fiction

1.	My Father's Eyes: A Memoir
DBC 03861
Bonina, Mary 
Set mid-to-late twentieth century-- with the heart of the book taking place in the 1950s and '60s-- My Father's Eyes is a loving daughter's memoir of a family coming to terms with a legacy of blindness, and a father's heroic efforts to secure independence and maintain his dignity.

2.	The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation
DB 52812 
Fleischer, Doris Zames; Zames, Frieda. 
Legislative history of the civil rights movement for individuals with disabilities in the United States. Discusses the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, various advocacy organizations, and the roles of technology and deinstitutionalization. 

3.	About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times
DB 96492 BR 22839
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie; Catapano, Peter. 
Sixty-one essays originally published as part of the New York Times Disability column. The essays are organized into the topics of justice, belonging, working, navigating, coping, love, family, and joy. Essayists have physical, motor, sensory, and cognitive differences. 

4.	Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law 
DB 96188 BR 22702
Girma, Haben. 
The autobiography of the first deaf-blind graduate of Harvard Law School. Girma describes her childhood, world travels, development of a text-to-braille communication system, and time at Harvard Law, as well as the ways she uses her talents to advocate for those with disabilities. 

5.	The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, the Original Deaf-Blind Girl 
DB 51840 BR 13353
Gitter, Elisabeth. 
The life of Laura Bridgman, deaf and blind from age two, who became one of the most famous women of the mid-nineteenth century. Explores her education with Samuel Howe at Boston's Perkins Institution for the Blind; views her achievements in the context of American social, cultural, and intellectual history. 

6.	The Unseen Minority: A Social History of Blindness in America 
DB 37927 BR 19219
Koestler, Frances A. 
Examines U.S. contributions toward improving the condition of blind individuals. Discusses the invention of braille and the origins of the talking book. Includes portraits of Louis Braille of France, Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan Macy, and Dorothy Eustis, as well as detailed accounts of mid-twentieth-century federal and state legislation.

7.	The Changing Status of the Blind: From Separation to Integration 
DB 11059 
Lowenfeld, Berthold. 
Introduction to the social history of blindness and contemporary developments. Relates the movement of blind people from dependence to independence and evaluates current education, rehabilitation, public policy, attitudes, and economic forces.

8.	People of Vision: A History of the American Council of the Blind
DB 56115  
Megivern, James J; Megivern, Marjorie. 
Chronicle of the forty-year-old advocacy organization, American Council of the Blind (ACB), including its split with the National Federation of the Blind in 1961. The work, based on the private papers of founding member Durward McDaniel and conversations with other ACB members, also explores earlier activism on behalf of blind people.

9.	A Disability History of the United States 
DB 75554 BR 19638
Nielsen, Kim E. 
Professor and author of The Radical Lives of Helen Keller (DB 57987) chronicles the role of people with disabilities in America. Discusses the concept of dependency, Native American beliefs, disabled war veterans, institutionalization, and civil rights activism. 

10.	The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public 
DB 69157 BR 18268
Schweik, Susan Marie. 
University of California at Berkeley professor explores the emergence of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century local laws in America that targeted poor and disabled people. Examines the historical context and social climate behind the policies, and the resulting discrimination, finally addressed in 1990 by the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

Fiction

1.	The Darkest Star 
DB 93121
Armentrout, Jennifer L. 
When seventeen-year-old Evie is caught up in a raid at a notorious club where humans and aliens can mingle freely, she meets Luc. She assumes he is a Luxen since he is unnaturally beautiful-- but he is in fact something much more powerful. For senior high and older readers.

2.	Gift of Gold 
DB 66740
Butler, Beverly 
College junior Cathy Wheeler, from Light a Single Candle (RC 22637), wants to study speech therapy, an aspiration the department chair considers unrealistic for a blind student. Meanwhile Cathy decides between two young men and hopes to regain some of her vision. Young Adult. 

3.	Midwives. Books 1-3 
DB 97393 
Eakes, Laurie Alice 
Three novels of inspirational historical romance, written between 2011 and 2013, about midwives in nineteenth-century Virginia. In Lady in the Mist, midwife Tabitha Eckles meets a British nobleman working as an indentured servant. Also includes Heart's Safe Passage and Choices of the Heart. 

4.	What Love Sees 
DBC 01226 BR 07671
Vreeland, Susan. 
This biographical novel tells the story of Jean Treadway, who became blind after an operation to correct her vision. Treadway leaves her protected aristocratic New England home and moves to a remote California mountain town in order to marry Forrest Holly, a blind rancher.

5.	Ask the Dust 
DBC 03233
Fante, John. 
Fictionalized version of Colorado-born Fante's life as an aspiring writer of stories, novels and screenplays in California.

6.	Exceptions Journal. Volume 1, Spring 2015 
DBC 03423
Grimes, Katie. 
Edited by Michigan State University students, Exceptions Journal showcases the perspectives of visually impaired and blind individuals through creative writing and art. Some strong language. 2015.

7.	Only Bread, Only Light: Poems 
DB 54093
Kuusisto, Stephen. 
Collection of poetry that has the experience of blindness as a common theme. Author of Planet of the Blind (RC 45500) describes childhood perceptions in "Blind Days in Early Youth," adult decisions in "Learning Braille at Thirty-nine," and celebrating music and nature in "Essay on November." 

8.	Lanterns & Lances 
DB 38000
Thurber, James. 
Collection of twenty-four essays. These humorous satirical pieces cover such topics as how to get through the day, the expression "you know," which is afflicting speech in the United States, the return of comedy to the American theater, and the involvements one gets into at cocktail parties, particularly with determined ladies who want to argue or talk while tipsy.

9.	Ports of Call 
DB 49461
Vance, Jack. 
Myron Tany's eccentric and vain aunt, Dame Hester Lajoie, wants to have rejuvenation therapy available on another planet. A capricious woman, she appoints Myron captain of her luxury spaceship for this voyage, only to leave him stranded on his first venture into space.

10.	Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart: A Novel 
DB 58344 BR 15510
Walker, Alice. 
Fifty-seven-year-old writer Kate and her artist-lover Yolo begin separate journeys: Yolo to Hawaii and Kate to the Colorado and Amazon rivers. In the course of adventures filled with snakes, shamans, and memories, both experience spiritual alignment while cleansing themselves of materialism, past loves, and tragedies. Some descriptions of sex.