An irreverent, tragicomic, astoundingly articulate memoir about going blind—and growing upOn his eighteenth birthday, Ryan Knighton was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a congenital, progressive disease marked by night-blindness, tunnel vision, and, eventually, total blindness. In this penetrating, nervy memoir, which ricochets between meditation and black comedy, Knighton tells the story of his fifteen-year descent into blindness while incidentally revealing the world of the sighted in all its phenomenal peculiarity.
Stumbling literally and emotionally into darkness, into love, and into adulthood, he uses his disability to provide a window into the human condition. His experience of blindness offers unexpected perspectives on sight and the other senses, culture, identity, language, and our fears and fantasies.
Cockeyed is not a conventional confessional. Knighton is powerful and irreverent in words and thought, and impatient with the preciousness we’ve come to expect from books on disability. Readers will find it hard to put down this wild ride around their everyday world with a wicked, smart, blind guide at the wheel.
- ISBN10 1283139154
- ISBN13 9781283139151
- Publish Date 1 January 2007 (first published 2 May 2006)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 17 February 2015
- Publish Country US
- Imprint PublicAffairs
- Format eBook
- Pages 288
- Language English