Interview
August 14, 2024
Disability Rights and the Lived Experiences of Visual Impairment in The Country of the Blind: An Interview with Andrew Leland
Evan P. Sullivan
Andrew Leland’s 2023 book The Country of the Blind, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is an absorbing exploration of blindness and disability in twenty-first-century America. Leland, who is visually impaired from retinitis pigmentosa, surveys the many challenges and opportunities blind and visually impaired people have experienced as a result of losing their sight and confronting ableism. From stories about assistive technology and national conferences for blind people to explorations of love and loss, Leland’s book is an engrossing memoir that highlights the multiplicity of experiences of being a visually impaired person in the United States.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
You named your book after the H.G. Wells short story, “The Country of the Blind.” What do you think twenty-first-century Americans unfamiliar with disability rights could take away from that story?
The story is about this explorer who is separated from his expedition in the Andes mountains, and he falls into a rock slide into this lost civilization that’s been living untouched by anyone else for generations. It’s the proverbial “Country of the Blind” where [...]