-
There Plant Eyes
- A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness
- Narrated by: M. Leona Godin
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $28.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Beauty of Dusk
- On Vision Lost and Found
- By: Frank Bruni
- Narrated by: Frank Bruni
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One morning in late 2017, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni woke up with strangely blurred vision. He wondered at first if some goo or gunk had worked its way into his right eye. But this was no fleeting annoyance, no fixable inconvenience. Overnight, a rare stroke had cut off blood to one of his optic nerves, rendering him functionally blind in that eye - forever. And he soon learned from doctors that the same disorder could ravage his left eye, too. He could lose his sight altogether.
-
-
Beautiful and optimistic
- By Robin Cleavenger on 03-05-22
By: Frank Bruni
-
Blind Man's Bluff
- A Memoir
- By: James Tate Hill
- Narrated by: Curtis Armstrong
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At age 16, James Tate Hill was diagnosed with Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy, a condition that left him legally blind. After high school friends stopped calling and a disability counselor advised him to aim for C's in his classes, he used his remaining blurry peripheral vision to pretend he could still see. Feigning eye contact, memorizing common routes, filling shelves with paperbacks he read via tape cassettes, he organized his life around passing for sighted.
-
-
Love and horror
- By rkrippin on 08-16-21
By: James Tate Hill
-
Demystifying Disability
- What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally
- By: Emily Ladau
- Narrated by: Emily Ladau
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An approachable guide to being a thoughtful, informed ally to disabled people, with actionable steps for what to say and do (and what not to do) and how you can help make the world a more accessible, inclusive place.
-
-
Disappointing PC rant of a Undergrad
- By Coral on 10-13-21
By: Emily Ladau
-
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
- Unabridged Selections
- By: Alice Wong
- Narrated by: Alejandra Ospina, Alice Wong
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent - but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people.
-
-
Missing stories
- By Adrianna A. on 11-19-20
By: Alice Wong
-
A Sense of the World
- By: Jason Roberts
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Journalist Jason Roberts has won critical praise for A Sense of the World. His biography of "the blind traveler" has been named a Best Book of the Year by numerous publications, including the Washington Post, and has been nominated for the Guardian First Book Award. Although blinded as a young Naval lieutenant, James Holman became one of the world's most prolific and observant travelers.
-
-
Vivid and engaging
- By David on 04-17-09
By: Jason Roberts
-
Unthinkable
- Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy
- By: Jamie Raskin
- Narrated by: Jamie Raskin
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this searing memoir, Congressman Jamie Raskin tells the story of the 45 days at the start of 2021 that permanently changed his life - and his family’s - as he confronted the painful loss of his son to suicide, lived through the violent insurrection in our nation’s Capitol, and led the impeachment effort to hold President Trump accountable for inciting the political violence. Now for the first time, Congressman Raskin discusses this unimaginable convergence of personal and public trauma.
-
-
This book is a MASTERPIECE
- By Laura M. on 01-07-22
By: Jamie Raskin
-
The Beauty of Dusk
- On Vision Lost and Found
- By: Frank Bruni
- Narrated by: Frank Bruni
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One morning in late 2017, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni woke up with strangely blurred vision. He wondered at first if some goo or gunk had worked its way into his right eye. But this was no fleeting annoyance, no fixable inconvenience. Overnight, a rare stroke had cut off blood to one of his optic nerves, rendering him functionally blind in that eye - forever. And he soon learned from doctors that the same disorder could ravage his left eye, too. He could lose his sight altogether.
-
-
Beautiful and optimistic
- By Robin Cleavenger on 03-05-22
By: Frank Bruni
-
Blind Man's Bluff
- A Memoir
- By: James Tate Hill
- Narrated by: Curtis Armstrong
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At age 16, James Tate Hill was diagnosed with Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy, a condition that left him legally blind. After high school friends stopped calling and a disability counselor advised him to aim for C's in his classes, he used his remaining blurry peripheral vision to pretend he could still see. Feigning eye contact, memorizing common routes, filling shelves with paperbacks he read via tape cassettes, he organized his life around passing for sighted.
-
-
Love and horror
- By rkrippin on 08-16-21
By: James Tate Hill
-
Demystifying Disability
- What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally
- By: Emily Ladau
- Narrated by: Emily Ladau
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An approachable guide to being a thoughtful, informed ally to disabled people, with actionable steps for what to say and do (and what not to do) and how you can help make the world a more accessible, inclusive place.
-
-
Disappointing PC rant of a Undergrad
- By Coral on 10-13-21
By: Emily Ladau
-
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
- Unabridged Selections
- By: Alice Wong
- Narrated by: Alejandra Ospina, Alice Wong
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent - but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people.
-
-
Missing stories
- By Adrianna A. on 11-19-20
By: Alice Wong
-
A Sense of the World
- By: Jason Roberts
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Journalist Jason Roberts has won critical praise for A Sense of the World. His biography of "the blind traveler" has been named a Best Book of the Year by numerous publications, including the Washington Post, and has been nominated for the Guardian First Book Award. Although blinded as a young Naval lieutenant, James Holman became one of the world's most prolific and observant travelers.
-
-
Vivid and engaging
- By David on 04-17-09
By: Jason Roberts
-
Unthinkable
- Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy
- By: Jamie Raskin
- Narrated by: Jamie Raskin
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this searing memoir, Congressman Jamie Raskin tells the story of the 45 days at the start of 2021 that permanently changed his life - and his family’s - as he confronted the painful loss of his son to suicide, lived through the violent insurrection in our nation’s Capitol, and led the impeachment effort to hold President Trump accountable for inciting the political violence. Now for the first time, Congressman Raskin discusses this unimaginable convergence of personal and public trauma.
-
-
This book is a MASTERPIECE
- By Laura M. on 01-07-22
By: Jamie Raskin
-
Disfigured
- On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
- By: Amanda Leduc
- Narrated by: Amanda Barker
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.
-
-
Just Okay but gave New Insight
- By Tori Gardner on 03-14-22
By: Amanda Leduc
-
Blindness for Beginners
- A Renewed Vision of the Possible
- By: Maribel Steel
- Narrated by: Alice Hermans
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Imagine if you were to lose your sight? Would it feel like the end of everything worthwhile? There is a way forward. Once you realise that blindness is a word and not a sentence, life takes on a new perspective. There are ways to thrive with vision loss. This book reveals how to turn such a life-challenge into a lifestyle you can fully manage and enjoy.
By: Maribel Steel
-
The War of Nerves
- Inside the Cold War Mind
- By: Martin Sixsmith
- Narrated by: Kris Dyer
- Length: 26 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
More than any other conflict, the Cold War was fought on the battlefield of the human mind. And, nearly 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, its legacy still endures - not only in our politics, but in our own thoughts and fears.
By: Martin Sixsmith
-
The New Map
- Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations
- By: Daniel Yergin
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 15 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world is being shaken by the collision of energy, climate change, and the clashing power of nations in a time of global crisis. The "shale revolution" in oil and gas - made possible by fracking technology, but not without controversy - has transformed the American economy, ending the "era of shortage", but introducing a turbulent new era. Almost overnight, the United States has become the world's number one energy powerhouse - and, during the coronavirus crisis, brokered a tense truce between Russia and Saudi Arabia.
-
-
Not his best: Overly broad, kind of sloppy
- By Jonathan Kelman on 02-23-21
By: Daniel Yergin
-
Fuzz
- When Nature Breaks the Law
- By: Mary Roach
- Narrated by: Mary Roach
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.
-
-
Footnotes.
- By Jimmyjoejangles on 09-16-21
By: Mary Roach
-
Seeing Ghosts
- A Memoir
- By: Kat Chow
- Narrated by: Kat Chow
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kat Chow has always been unusually fixated on death. She worried constantly about her parents dying - especially her mother. A vivacious and mischievous woman, Kat's mother made a morbid joke that would haunt her for years to come: When she died, she'd like to be stuffed and displayed in Kat's future apartment in order to always watch over her. After her mother dies unexpectedly from cancer, Kat, her sisters, and their father are plunged into a debilitating, lonely grief.
-
-
Real
- By C Williams on 02-06-22
By: Kat Chow
-
Golem Girl
- A Memoir
- By: Riva Lehrer
- Narrated by: Riva Lehrer, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1958, Riva is one of the first children born with spina bifida to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to "fix" her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured. Everything changes when, as an adult, Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture.
-
-
Golem Girl is fabulous!
- By Yarrow on 12-16-20
By: Riva Lehrer
-
Being Heumann
- An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
- By: Judith Heumann, Kristen Joiner
- Narrated by: Ali Stroker
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn't built for all of us and of one woman's activism - from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington - Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann's lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a "fire hazard" to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher's license because of her paralysis, Judy's actions set a precedent that improved rights for disabled people.
-
-
A must read for everyone
- By Christopher A Cawthon on 09-28-20
By: Judith Heumann, and others
-
People Love Dead Jews
- Reports from a Haunted Present
- By: Dara Horn
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture - and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly anti-Semitic attacks - Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: She was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones.
-
-
Powerful and smart
- By BK on 09-25-21
By: Dara Horn
-
What Can a Body Do?
- How We Meet the Built World
- By: Sara Hendren
- Narrated by: Sara Hendren
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A fascinating and provocative new way of looking at the things we use and the spaces we inhabit and a call to imagine a better-designed world for us all. In a series of vivid stories drawn from the lived experience of disability and the ideas and innovations that have emerged from it - from cyborg arms to customizable cardboard chairs to deaf architecture - Sara Hendren invites us to rethink the things and settings we live with.
-
-
Very necessary
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-21
By: Sara Hendren
-
On Freedom
- Four Songs of Care and Constraint
- By: Maggie Nelson
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom's long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept's complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs, and climate.
-
-
Just great
- By Kristi Strong on 12-14-21
By: Maggie Nelson
-
A Calling for Charlie Barnes
- By: Joshua Ferris
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn't appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life's compromises, and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eternal romantic would like out of his present circumstances and into the American dream. But when the twin calamities of the Great Recession and a cancer scare come along to compound his troubles, his dreams dwindle further, and an infinite past full of forking paths quickly tapers to a black dot.
-
-
the best book I've read this year
- By Brent & Marie on 10-07-21
By: Joshua Ferris
Publisher's Summary
From Homer to Helen Keller, from Dune to Stevie Wonder, from the invention of braille to the science of echolocation, M. Leona Godin explores the fascinating history of blindness, interweaving it with her own story of gradually losing her sight.
There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture, challenging deeply ingrained ideas about what it means to be “blind”. For millennia, blindness has been used to signify such things as thoughtlessness (“blind faith”), irrationality (“blind rage”), and unconsciousness (“blind evolution”). But at the same time, blind people have been othered as the recipients of special powers as compensation for lost sight (from the poetic gifts of John Milton to the heightened senses of the comic book hero Daredevil).
Godin - who began losing her vision at age 10 - illuminates the often-surprising history of both the condition of blindness and the myths and ideas that have grown up around it over the course of generations. She combines an analysis of blindness in art and culture (from King Lear to Star Wars) with a study of the science of blindness and key developments in accessibility (the white cane, embossed printing, digital technology) to paint a vivid personal and cultural history.
A genre-defying work, There Plant Eyes reveals just how essential blindness and vision are to humanity’s understanding of itself and the world.
*Includes a downloadable PDF containing the notes and bibliography from the book
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Critic Reviews
"[A] thought-provoking mixture of criticism, memoir, and advocacy. Drawing on works including the Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, King Lear, and Paradise Lost, [Godin] traces two ideas: that being unable to see brings deep insight and that the blind can show how little the sighted truly see. Godin counters these stereotypes with her own experiences and with surprising details from the lives of blind activists such as Helen Keller, to argue that 'there are as many ways of being blind as there are of being sighted.’”
—The New Yorker
“Elegant, fiercely argued . . . Godin enlarges our understanding of the blind and sight impaired, and There Plant Eyes proves a landmark contribution to the literature of disability, comparable to Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face and Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly—which is to say the literature of the human itself.” —The Wall Street Journal
“There Plant Eyes is so graceful, so wise, so effortlessly erudite, I learned something new and took pleasure in every page. All hail its originality, its humanity, and its ‘philosophical obsession with diversity in all its complicated and messy glory.’” —Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
More from the same
Narrator
What listeners say about There Plant Eyes
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kim Paulk
- 09-11-21
Truly insightful and a must read for all!
An incredibly perfect collaboration of historical and modern perspectives on blindness. This book should be required reading for everyone to discover the hidden truths about blindness! read and you will learn being or becoming blind is not the death sentence humanity has been taught. as I learned firsthand, living a rich life with vision loss myself. The author gets it right and reveals the truths about fearing, interacting with, or becoming blind. Great reference before portraying a blind person in creative works. Terrific for trivia, facts and myth-busting. Finally — a book on blindness I can refer to for facts, old and new
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Thoughtful Reader
- 06-25-21
Better than anticipated.
I expected this book to be good from a snippet I got to read before the release. The book exceeded all expectations. Godin applies her considerable talents and intellect to create a book of history and personal experience; culture and social science; humor and advocacy to provide the reader with an understanding of the myths and realities of being a blind person from B.C.E, to the 21st century.
If you wish to have your assumptions challenged or wish to expand your education of everyone from the legendary Homer to Dare Devil, to Stevie Wonder; from Milton, to Helen Keller, this book is worth your time. You will put the book down with your heart and mind changed.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amanda McCoy
- 06-24-21
Amazing!!
I’m visually impaired, and I have never felt so understood! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! Im going to go recommend this to everyone I know now. The sighted, who want to know me. The blind, who may feel heard today. The family, who worry for their blind child or blind parent. The teachers, who encounter the blind as blindly as we encounter them. And to myself whenever I am next reminded of this book and see this review :) Definitely a reread!