ABSTRACT
Stephen Kuusisto, writing in his 1998 memoir Planet of the Blind , laments the lack of available writing about disability during his childhood in 1950s and 1960s America. His striking use of the present tense suggests a painful sense of immediacy, even as he looks back in time:
In our town there are no discernible men or women with disabilities, with the exception of World War II veterans. A disabled child is without a category: one simply doesn’t see them…There are no books about blind children or how to bring them up, no associations of parents or support materials, at least not in rural New Hampshire. Instead there are assumptions: blindness is a profound misfortune, a calamity really, for ordinary life can’t accommodate it.
(Planet of the Blind 13)