When Rosemary Mahoney went to Tibet to write a magazine article about Sabriye Tenberken, she harbored the conviction that she would rather die than lose her eyesight. Tenberken, who is blind herself, founded Braille Without Borders, Tibet’s first school for children who are blind.
Instead of discovering a demoralized community, Mahoney encountered children who were happy and productive and who often expressed pride in being blind. She concludes, “The widely held assumption that blindness holds nothing but loss is quickly corrected by the blind themselves.”
Later, Mahoney traveled to India to teach at Tenberken’s international school for social entrepreneurs. With humor and vivid attention to detail, this master storyteller shares participants’ wrenching yet heartwarming narratives.
Interspersed in this book throughout reports of her personal experiences, she relates stories of people with blindness throughout history as well as fascinating scientific evidence that “the experience of newfound sight is extremely difficult.” (Little, Brown)
About the Author
Sonya VanderVeen Feddema is a freelance writer and a member of Covenant CRC in St. Catharines, Ontario.
