[nagdu] Guide dog book on Bookshare

Tracy Carcione carcione at access.net
Thu Jul 15 18:08:31 UTC 2010


I just found this book on the list of new additions to Bookshare.


Traveling Blind: Adventures in Vision with a Guide Dog by My Side

Susan Krieger

Long Synopsis: = Traveling Blind is a romance, a travel adventure, an
emotional quest, and a deeply reflective description of coming to terms
with lack
of sight. It reveals the invisible work of navigating with a guide dog
while learning to perceive the world in new ways. Although an intensely
personal
account, Traveling Blind is not simply memoir, for it extends beyond one
person's experience to illuminate our understandings of vision informed by
the
academic fields of disability studies, feminist ethnography, and the study
of human-animal bonds. What does it mean to "travel blind"? What is it
like
to live in a world where things are not black and white so much as shades
of gray? How does it feel to navigate through constantly changing imagery
that
requires changing inner perspectives as well? What can experiences of
blindness tell us about sight? The book confronts these questions and
more. In a
series of beautifully textured stories, the author takes the reader on a
fascinating journey as she travels with Teela, her lively ""golden dog,"
through
airports, city streets, and southwest desert landscapes, exploring these
surroundings with changed sight. This unusual account of travel will
inspire the
sighted as well as the blind, offering pointed observations on processes
of learning to work with a service animal and on coming to terms with a
disability.
In remarkably visual detail, Krieger makes palpable an ambivalent world.
Repeatedly confronted with social stereotypes (that she should be totally
blind
and incapable of mobility), she comes to value her own unique ways of
seeing and her interdependence with both her animal and human companions.
Her descriptions
of exquisite natural landscapes and intimate personal moments will touch
as well as educate readers.




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