The Heritage Month Project: "Blind Man's Bluff" by James Tate Hill

While Disability Pride Month (July) is recognized by a number of groups, it doesn't appear to have ever been observed by the U.S. government as a heritage month. Nonetheless, July was kind of free as heritage month reading goes, and what you might call disability literature isn't something I think I've ever sought out, so I decided to go for it.

You can find lists of books featuring disability. I was attracted to Mystery – The Disability Book Archive,  but then was thrown because it included a book about vampires, who I don't think of as disabled. (This led me to much speculating about what, exactly,  disability is, which I will spare you. You're welcome.) I wish now that I'd spent more time going through The Disability Book Archive's other genre offerings.  I did look at Book Riot's 20 Must-Read Fiction and Nonfiction Books About the Disability Experience, though. It had a lot of memoir, and I was hoping for fiction at that point.

Yes, I am so freaking picky.

One way or another, it's the end of July, and I've only read one disability-related book, the memoir Blind Man's Bluff by James Tate Hill. I ran into Hill on BlueSky, where he comes across as being very congenial. (The first thing I look for in a writer, I guess.) His memoir describes his efforts to hide his blindness, something he had a shot at doing, because he became legally blind in his mid-teens, being left with some modest vision. (I think the cover of his book is an attempt at replicating what he can see.) The book is also described as humorous, which is always a draw for me.

So here was an intriguing situation, with humor. I was in. 

First, Hill does have a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor that I definitely appreciate. 

Second, what most intrigued me about this book was not the disability/blindness. What intrigued me was the way it was about transitioning from high school to college and from college to the work world and from single life to married life. Yes, Hill had to do all these things I recognize while working out how he would get his college reading done, how he would mentally map out how he'd get to classes, how he would find the men's room in restaurants and bars, and how he would, as a college instructor, deal with the issue of students raising their hands to speak, since he couldn't see them. Also, he risked his life every time he crossed a road. But there was still much that he was living through that many seeing people live through, also.

I don't want to downplay the significance of the blindness Hill deals with. But what struck me about this book was not how different he is, but how much he is the same. He just can't see.

The "Bluff" Aspect of This Book

The young Hill didn't like to address his vision with new people. He didn't like to talk about what he couldn't do. When he did feel he had to deal with it, with new people he expected to have to interact with in the future, for instance, he would say something about having blindspots that made it too hard to do something. "Too hard. Never impossible. Not once had I ever said I can't drive; it was always I don't drive, which wasn't a lie. I didn't drive. If that particular verb left room for one to infer choice, so be it."

That idea of choice seems significant to me. When he lost his sight at sixteen due to Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy, Hill didn't just lose his vision. He lost the choice to do so many things, choices that sighted people have. And that may be a big factor in why he tried to keep his blindness to himself as much as he could. He didn't want to make his lack of choice obvious to the world.

At one point, though, he says, "I had accomplished less than many blind people who acknowledged their disability."

He was still young, though. He had time.

The Writer Aspect of This Book

I'm not sure if I've read other writer memoirs. I can recall reading my-mother-was-horrible memoirs and my-oddball-dad memoirs and collections of essays about aging women or young humor writers. I can't believe I've never read a writer memoir, but I have to say that Hill as a young writer seemed familiar to me not because I'd read about writers, but because I am one.

He writes about how he became a reader after he lost his sight, through audio books. He writes about editing his work. He quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald. He gets an agent!

This, to me, illustrated that a disability isn't everything a person is. This person was a writer like me. In fact, one who right now is doing more than I am professionally.

I am still here, though. I have time, too.

The Memoirist Now

I don't want to say. I don't want to take another writer's story. Read his book. Oh, wait! I will share that there was a section of this book, which was probably the most painful, and that was only marginally involved with his blindness. Unless, of course, I've got that wrong and it was intricately involved with his blindness. Anyway, that was a part that really kept drawing me in in a when-is-what-I-am-damn-sure-is-going-to-happen going to happen? way.

A Couple of Other Options

While going over disability reading lists, I did find a couple of novels I'd read. And written about here!

Tru Biz by Sarah Novic, an adult book that deals with a deaf school that both my sister (for what that's worth) and I liked. It also won the Alex Award.

The War That Saved My Life , a middle grade book by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, turned up somewhere on a disability reading list. This is a book I liked, and I liked the sequel even more. These are books that fall into the World War II British child evacuation genre. I'm assuming there's a genre, because there are so many of them. Not complaining about that. I have enjoyed a lot of those books. In this one, main character Ada has a clubfoot that was ignored by her abusive mother. 

If you followed my link to my post on the subject, you saw that I didn't even mention Ada's disability. I had trouble recalling it until I read a review of the book at a site that focuses on disability. What was my thinking about that? Can't even begin to guess.

I do think that the reading I've done this month, limited as it was, will change my perception of how disability is portrayed in the future.

I don't have any Heritage Month reading planned for August. I hope I can use that time to read ahead for September.