[blparent] Ryan Knighton's Book

[Deborah Kent Stein]

I'm all for it!  Whoever finds an address first, please share it!

Debbie


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jo Elizabeth Pinto" <jopinto at msn.com>
To: "NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 01, 2012 7:19 PM
Subject: [blparent] Ryan Knighton's Book


>I did a little research on the Ryan Knighton book featured on This American 
>Life.  If you were appalled before, check out these details from Amazon's 
>page on "C'mon Papa" Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark."  This book is 
>apparently not available to people in the United States--thank God.  It 
>will be at some point, though.
>
>
> Editorial Reviews
> Review
> NATIONAL BESTSELLER
>
> "Every new parent behaves like they're the first human to have given 
> birth, and you don't always want to be seated beside them at a dinner 
> party. What makes Knighton special is that, being blind, he's exquisitely 
> attuned to every detail of the experience, every moment of joy and 
> embarrassment, in a way that can make the merely sighted feel frankly 
> unperceptive. His book made me want to have another kid, just to see what 
> I missed the first time round."
> - Daniel Richler, author of Kicking Tomorrow
>
> "A warm, insightful and very funny book. Knighton is a writer you enjoy in 
> the moment and think about later."
> - Timothy Taylor, author of Stanley Park
>
> "Ryan Knighton can't see, true. But his capacity to look inward, to create 
> a landscape of what it is to be a blind parent, is nothing short of 
> profound. He's also hilarious, and I'm warning you, you're going to cry, 
> too. C'mon Papa is a memoir like no other, about a life like no other."
> - Alicia Erian, author of Towelhead
>
> "Painfully funny. Whether he's writing about almost getting run over, 
> role-playing a cervix or losing his infant daughter in the snow, Knighton 
> is wise, witty, moving and assured."
> - Annabel Lyon, author of The Golden Mean
>
> "A wonderful writer with a gift for laughter when the situation requires 
> it; and even when it doesn't, he is still able to make it work. . . . 
> Incredibly honest, eloquent and moving."
> - Ottawa Citizen
>
> "Funny and moving, this is neither a fact-driven public service 
> announcement nor a romanticized representation of blindness. . . . 
> Well-written, thoughtful and engaging, this is a discussion of parenting 
> with a difference, a book valuable not so much because it tells a 
> remarkable story but because it tells its story remarkably well."
> - Winnipeg Free Press
> &#16...
>
>
> Ryan Knighton's humorous and perceptive tales of fatherhood take us inside 
> an unusual new family, one bound by its father's particular darkness and 
> light.
>
> C'mon Papa is Ryan Knighton's heartbreaking and hilarious voyage through 
> the first year of fatherhood. Becoming a father is a stressful, daunting 
> rite of passage to be sure, but for a blind father, the fears are 
> unimaginably heightened. Ryan will have to find novel ways to adapt to 
> nearly every aspect of parenting: the most basic skills are nearly 
> impossible to contemplate, let alone master. And how will Ryan get to know 
> this pre-verbal bundle of coos and burps when he can't see her smile, or 
> look into her eyes for hints of the person to come?
>
> But this is no pity party, and Ryan has no time for sentimentality. 
> Tackling these hurdles with grace and humour, Ryan is determined to do his 
> part - and this is where the fun starts. From holding his daughter as she 
> wails into the night to their first nerve-wracking walk to the cafe, no 
> activity between father and daughter is without its pitfalls. In his 
> struggle to "see" Tess, Ryan reimagines the relationship between father 
> and child during that first chaotic year.
>
> C'mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark is Ryan Knighton's second 
> memoir, written after the birth of his daughter, Tess. (I reviewed 
> Knighton's Cockeyed: a Memoir in April.) In his latest book, Knighton 
> writes of his experiences as a blind father raising a daughter.
>
> C'mon Papa is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the 
> conception, where Knighton's wife Tracy suffers a miscarriage as a result 
> of a molar pregnancy. Tracy goes through chemotherapy and the Knightons 
> must wait a year before trying again to conceive. The second part is about 
> the birth and Knighton's trials with an infant. The third part deals with 
> blind life with a two-year-old. I did not find this story as funny as 
> Cockeyed, although it still was a book I couldn't put down. Knighton 
> writes of his failures at diaper-changing and baby-minding. After a heavy 
> snowfall, Knighton loses his daughter while they are playing outside and 
> there is a sense of panic that infects the reader until they are reunited. 
> More tales of near-disaster, or even near-death, are included. The 
> toughest time for Knighton is trying to care for Tess while she is a baby. 
> It gets easier for him when she is a toddler since she, even at the age of 
> two, can walk and see and lead her father around.
>
> Unfortunately I missed seeing Ryan at an author appearance in Toronto 
> while I was in Halifax in early May. It would have been a pleasure to meet 
> him; even more so now that I have read his latest memoir.
>
>
> Maybe we should write to This American Life and ask that equal airtime be 
> given to competency.
>
> Jo Elizabeth
>
> "How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, 
> compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant 
> of the weak and the strong.  Because someday in life you will have been 
> all of these."--George Washington Carver, 1864-1943, American scientist
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