Category: Nonfiction

A Quartet of Image Descriptions for Paul Strand’s “Blind Woman” (1917)

A picture speaks a thousand words, so lay them on me! Paul Strand’s “Blind Woman” is the first photograph I wrote about as my writing sample for Face of the Blind: Essays on Photography, as part of my successful application to be a New York Public Library Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellow this year. As I wrote in my proposal, image description is… Read more

NYPL Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship for “Face of the Blind: Essays on Photography”!

Thanks to a Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship, New York Public Library will be my office this fall! I’m excited to bang around the library telling people I’m doing research in the Wallach Photography Collection… Face of the Blind: Essays on Photography Proposal by M. Leona Godin Many anonymous blind people populate the  photographs of NYPL’s Wallach            Collection. Through a series of essays,… Read more

Revisiting “Cancer Vs. Blindness”

*I’m facing another biopsy this week and I’m trying not to freak out! Besides hoping that the results are negative, I’m also crossing my fingers that I’ll not have to deal with ableism at the doctor’s office like last time… With respect to making lemonade out of a sour situation, “Cancer Vs. Blindness” was the first essay I wrote for… Read more

Reading Club Discussion Guide for ‘There Plant Eyes’

February is Low Vision Awareness Month, and I’m honored that There Plant Eyes was chosen as one of 3 Reading Club books by the NNLM (Network of the National Library of Medicine). Here’s the announcement, and here’s TPE featured plus other vision resources. Below is the discussion guide I created for them. I hope it will be useful for other… Read more

Footnote on ‘Year of the Tiger’ by Alice Wong

Year of the tiger: An Activist’s Life (Vintage, 2022) by Alice Wong (editor of Disability Visibility) is funny and angry and silly and deadly sobering and so much more. It’s a collection of essays, interviews, and images on subjects ranging from accessible and inviting coffee experiences to the Chinese Lunar New Year, from media representations of disabled people to the… Read more

‘Ulysses’ and Joyce’s Blind Community * Excerpt from an Article by Dr. Cleo Hanaway-Oakley

“Ulysses at 100: Why Joyce was so Obsessed with the Perfect Blue Cover” is a delightful article at The Conversation by Dr Cleo Hanaway-Oakley. It’s not only a fun deep dive into the famous blue cover, but it’s also about Joyce’s interest in blindness and the blind community. It is in this context that There Plant Eyes is referenced!: Blindness… Read more