Blindness in Literature - Literature By Blind People

Literature By Blind People

While blind and visually impaired people had contributed to the body of common literature for centuries, one notable example being the author of Paradise Lost, John Milton, the creation of autobiographical materials, or materials specific to blindness, is relatively new.

Most people are familiar with Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf, but there has been considerable progress since the publication of her work.

• Blind author Tom Sullivan has written several inspirational books, including If You Could See What I Hear, about his life and accomplishments.
• Jorge Luis Borges, who suffered from a congenital condition that caused him to become blind by middle age, discussed his condition in many autobiographical and semi-autobiographical works.
• Stephen Kuusisto wrote about his experiences as a visually impaired person in Planet of the Blind, and his upcoming memoir, Eavesdropping: A Life By Ear.
• John Hull, a university lecturer, wrote about going blind in Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness.
• Georgina Kleege, visually impaired since age 11, wrote about her life and how it was affected by cultural perceptions of blindness in Sight Unseen.
• Sally Hobart Alexander became blind when she was about 25 and a schoolteacher, during the 1970s, because of an eye disease. She wrote at least three autobiographical books about adapting to blindness.
• French author Jacques Lusseyran, who was visually impaired at the age of 7 when he injured his eyes on the sharp corner of a teacher's desk, became part of the French resistance during World War II. He spent a year in concentration camps, surviving the experience and writing several books. "And There Was Light" chronicles his experiences from early childhood until his liberation from a concentration camp.