Special Collections
Blindness and Visual Impairment Special Collection
Description: A collection featuring biographies, memoirs, fiction and non-fiction by and about members of the blind community. #disability
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Say No to the Devil
by Ian ZackWho was the greatest of all American guitarists?
You probably didn't name Gary Davis, but many of his musical contemporaries considered him without peer. Bob Dylan called Davis "one of the wizards of modern music. " Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead--who took lessons with Davis--claimed his musical ability "transcended any common notion of a bluesman. " And the folklorist Alan Lomax called him "one of the really great geniuses of American instrumental music. " But you won't find Davis alongside blues legends Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Despite almost universal renown among his contemporaries, Davis lives today not so much in his own work but through covers of his songs by Dylan, Jackson Browne, and many others, as well as in the untold number of students whose lives he influenced.
The first biography of Davis, Say No to the Devil restores "the Rev's" remarkable story. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with many of Davis's former students, Ian Zack takes readers through Davis's difficult beginning as the blind son of sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South to his decision to become an ordained Baptist minister and his move to New York in the early 1940s, where he scraped out a living singing and preaching on street corners and in storefront churches in Harlem.
There, he gained entry into a circle of musicians that included, among many others, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Dave Van Ronk. But in spite of his tremendous musical achievements, Davis never gained broad recognition from an American public that wasn't sure what to make of his trademark blend of gospel, ragtime, street preaching, and the blues. His personal life was also fraught, troubled by struggles with alcohol, women, and deteriorating health.
Zack chronicles this remarkable figure in American music, helping us to understand how he taught and influenced a generation of musicians.
The Blind Doctor
by Rosalind PerlmanJacob Bolotin was born blind to poor Jewish parents in Chicago in 1888. Rejecting the conventional wisdom of his time, he was determined to "be of use" in the world. He learned Braille and developed an uncanny sense of touch and hearing that would later make him one of the top heart and lung specialists in the city. He fought his way into and through the Chicago College of Medicine, graduated with honors at twenty-four, and became the world's first totally blind physician fully licensed to practice medicine.
Dr. Jacob Bolotin was a pioneer in raising the awareness of the world to the plight of the blind and the need for treating people with disabilities as capable and productive citizens. He died in 1924; he was only thirty-six years old. Five thousand people attended his funeral.
Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes
by Michael GrayEvoking the turbulent past of the subject's time and place, this odyssey to rural Georgia peels back the many layers of Blind Willie McTell's compelling, occasionally shocking, but ultimately uplifting story.
Portraying him as one of the most gifted artists of his generation, this account uncovers the secrets of McTell's ancestry, the hardships he suffered--including being blind from birth--and the successes he enjoyed.
Traveling throughout the South and beyond, this personal and moving journey unearths a lost world of black music, exploring why he drifted in and out of the public eye, how he was "rediscovered" time and again through chance meetings, and why, until now, so little has been written about the life of this extraordinary man.
Part biography, part travelogue, part social history, this atmospheric, unforgettable tale connects the subject's life to the tumultuous sweep of history, exploding every stereotype about blues musicians and revealing a vulnerable milieu of poverty and discrimination, demonstrating that little may have changed in the Deep South, even today.
Blind Justice
by Floyd MatsonThis is the long-awaited biography of Dr. Jacobus ten-Broek, legal scholar, UC Berkeley professor, and leader of the blind movement until his death in 1968.
Dr. Floyd Matson was a long-time collaborator with Dr. ten-Broek, authoring several books together, and perhaps the man who is most familiar with ten-Broek's work, and his life alive today. Dr. ten-Broek, pupil of Dr. Newel Perry, teacher at the California School for the Blind, was present at the creation of the National Federation of the Blind in 1940, and was its spiritual, intellectual, and political leader until ten-Broek's death in 1968.
This is a must-read for all those interested in the man at the center of a movement for over 30 years, whose legacy and inspiration is still felt today among blind activists around the world.
The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist
by Deirdre O'ConnellThe true story of a black musical savant in the era of slavery.
Born into slavery in Georgia, Tom Wiggins died an international celebrity in New York in 1908. His life was one of the most bizarre and moving episodes in American history. Born blind and autistic-and so unable to work with other slaves-Tom was left to his own devices. He was mesmerized by the music of the family's young daughters, and by the time he was four Tom was playing tunes on the piano.
Eventually freed from slavery, Wiggins, or "Blind Tom" as he was called, toured the country and the world playing for celebrities like Mark Twain and the Queen of England and dazzling audiences everywhere. One part genius and one part novelty act, Blind Tom embodied contradictions-a star and a freak, freed from slavery but still the property of his white guardian. His life offers a window into the culture of celebrity and racism at the turn of the twentieth century.
In this rollicking and heartrending book, O'Connell takes us through the life (and three separate deaths) of Blind Tom Wiggins, restoring to the modern reader this unusual yet quintessentially American life.