Haben

by Haben Girma

[Heather]

The thing that impressed me about this book was her sense that her disabilities, especially her blindness, really aren't that big of a deal.  She repeatedly says that blindness is "just a lack of sight" like it is mostly inconsequential.  I think this is because there is more adaptive infrastructure for blind people than for Deafblind people.  She is able to use braille computers and books, cane skills, and her guide dog to get around the world.  Adaptation for deafness like sign language aren't as accessible to her because of her blindness.

It amused me that she could never understand why her parents were so "overprotective."  She couldn't understand why they didn't want her to go off and build a school in Africa.  Most parents wouldn't say their teenager could go on a several month trip to Africa during the school year without thinking about it a bit.  That's without adding in the additional issues raised when that teenager is Deafblind.

It was frustrating to read about people who wouldn't inconvenience themselves a little bit to make adjustments that had huge impacts for her.  I would like to think that people would want to help others but I guess I'm being naive. 

This memoir is written as a series of essays on different points of her life so dwells for a while in one time period and then jumps ahead sometimes by several years.  I liked this format because a lot of memoirs get bogged down in minutia during the less interesting times of the subject's life. 

I'd recommend this memoir to anyone who wonders what it is like to be Deafblind in a seeing and hearing world.This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story