For the Benefit of Those Who See, Rosemary Mahoney
For the Benefit of Those Who See, Rosemary Mahoney
7 Rating(s)
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For the Benefit of Those Who See
Dispatches from the World of the Blind

Author: Rosemary Mahoney

Narrator: Rosemary Mahoney

Unabridged: 9 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/14/2014

Synopsis

In the tradition of Oliver Sacks's The Island of the Colorblind, Rosemary Mahoney tells the story of Braille Without Borders, the first school for the blind in Tibet, and of Sabriye Tenberken, the remarkable blind woman who founded the school.

Fascinated and impressed by what she learned from the blind children of Tibet, Mahoney was moved to investigate further the cultural history of blindness. As part of her research, she spent three months teaching at Tenberken's international training center for blind adults in Kerala, India, an experience that reveals both the shocking oppression endured by the world's blind, as well as their great resilience, integrity, ingenuity, and strength.

By living among the blind, Rosemary Mahoney enables us to see them in fascinating close up, revealing their particular "quality of ease that seems to broadcast a fundamental connection to the world." Having read For the Benefit of Those Who See, you will never see the world in quite the same way again.

"In this intelligent and humane book, Rosemary Mahoney writes of people who are blind . . . She reports on their courage and gives voice, time and again, to their miraculous dignity." -- Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree

Reviews

Goodreads review by Shannon on March 01, 2014

This was a strange book for me to read. I've read quite a bit about blindness, but the books I've read have been written by blind people. This book was written by a sighted woman with a very great fear of blindness, and a grave discomfort around those who could not see. As a college student, the auth......more

Goodreads review by Philip on July 12, 2014

We are drawn to that which relates to us. Our perspective is shaped by our experience, and because people in similar circumstances connect and draw from the well of similar experiences, our experience is also colored by our perspective. I am certain that I am drawn to books about blindness because of......more

Goodreads review by Rebecca on February 07, 2017

Written by Rosemary Mahoney, who traveled to two schools for the blind, one in India and one in Tibet. She followed the work of Sabriye Tenberken, a blind woman who founded Braille Without Boarders, the first school for the blind in Tibet. Mahoney does a good job describing how the blind have been t......more

Goodreads review by FM on October 22, 2017

This is a tough one for me. The first two thirds of this book made me so mad that I kept saying I should just bring it back to the library unfinished. The author's attitude toward blindness and blind people was so over-the-top negative that I had a hard time believing it. Seriously, she has never ha......more

Quotes



"Rosemary Mahoney is one of a handful of nonfiction writers so original and so surprising that I look forward to each new book with an excitement bordering on impatience. What makes For the Benefit of Those Who See especially absorbing is that it turns on Mahoney's greatest strength: her idiosyncratic and unblinking eye. As it explores the world of the blind, this provocative and revelatory work teaches us a great deal about what it means to see. And when I finished this book, I returned to the world feeling that all my senses had been sharpened."-George Howe Colt, author of The Big House (finalist for The National Book Award in nonfiction) and Brothers

"This joyful, thoughtful book took me on an emotional journey and introduced me to people I'll never forget. With her wonderfully sharp prose and great sense of humor and humanity, Rosemary Mahoney has written a riveting narrative that combines world-class reporting, science, history, and travel writing. For the Benefit of Those Who See has changed forever the way I view my senses, and made me aware of how I do and don't experience the world."-Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club

"In this intelligent and humane book, Rosemary Mahoney writes of people who are blind, many of them from impoverished cultures with little sympathy for their plight. She reports on their courage and gives voice, time and again, to their miraculous dignity."-Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree



"A spiritual odyssey into the world of the blind....A beautiful meditation on human nature."-Kirkus (Starred Review)

"'The blind can well enough defend themselves,' says Mahoney (Down the Nile) in this beautiful book....Mahoney becomes an exceptional translator for the blind, mediating for what she ends up seeing as two groups of the sighted: those who see with their eyes, and those who see with their minds."-Publishers Weekly

"[a] sparkling exploration...when you finish [Mahoney's] book, walk outside and close your eyes. You just might meet the world again, startling, mysterious, new. - Lynn Darling, Oprah.com

"Mahoney's overall story is one of hope and affirmation...this gracious book illuminates blind culture and teaches something of lifeways in Tibet, southern India, and sub-Saharan Africa." - Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Library Journal

"[Mahoney's] research is fascinating, her self-scrutiny refreshing and her prose just the right kind of gorgeous. In this wonderful book we discover along with the author that both sight and its absence come with burdens-and beauties." -Judith Stone, More.com

"Riveting...Compulsively readable...Mahoney's beautifully written narrative opens our eyes to the experience of blindness and offers fresh insight into human resilience and the way we view the world." -Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Book Page

"For The Benefit of Those Who See is a compassionate realization that seeing isn't the only path to knowing...for the entire book, Mahoney tries to understand sightless reality, and she does it with such blunt tenderness that it lends her writing a shambolic glee. Though she alludes to secondary sources-philosophical considerations of blindness, medical accounts of sight being restored to blind patients-it's her experiences that make Benefit so thoughtful." -Bret McCabe, Johns Hopkins Magazine

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