Things No Longer There - by Susan Krieger (Paperback)

About the Book

Things No Longer There is a lovingly crafted collection of personal stories about the author's struggle toward enlightenment while losing her eyesight. It is also, more broadly, about invisible landscapes--places of the heart that linger long after they have disappeared from the world outside. In these ten brief tales and one novella-length intimate drama, Susan Krieger takes us on a series of adventures in vision, a journey both inward and to various parts of the country. We travel with her as she goes birdwatching before sunrise in the New Mexico desert, learns to walk with a white cane, revisits an old love, returns to a summer camp of her youth, and reflects on the nature of blindness and sight.
Krieger's touching memoir explores the ways that outer landscapes may change and sight may be lost, but inner visions persist, giving meaning, jarring the senses with a very different picture than what appears before the eyes. This book will reward both the general reader and those interested in disability studies, feminist ethnography, and lesbian studies.

Book Synopsis

Things No Longer There is a lovingly crafted collection of personal stories about the author's struggle toward enlightenment while losing her eyesight. It is also, more broadly, about invisible landscapes--places of the heart that linger long after they have disappeared from the world outside. In these ten brief tales and one novella-length intimate drama, Susan Krieger takes us on a series of adventures in vision, a journey both inward and to various parts of the country. We travel with her as she goes birdwatching before sunrise in the New Mexico desert, learns to walk with a white cane, revisits an old love, returns to a summer camp of her youth, and reflects on the nature of blindness and sight.
Krieger's touching memoir explores the ways that outer landscapes may change and sight may be lost, but inner visions persist, giving meaning, jarring the senses with a very different picture than what appears before the eyes. This book will reward both the general reader and those interested in disability studies, feminist ethnography, and lesbian studies.

Review Quotes

"Things No Longer There evokes complex relationships between presence and absence; seeing, remembering, imagining, and desiring; perception and inspiration; and the lingering of the past in the present."--Barrie Thorne, University of California, Berkeley

"Susan Krieger's book illustrates in a personal, reflective, and emotional way how the gradual erosion of interpersonal relationships and familiar environments requires great effort to maintain a sense of inner reality and balance. This book is beautifully written, with vivid, compelling images that stayed with me."--Esther Rothblum, University of Vermont

About the Author

Susan Krieger, a sociologist and writer, teaches in the Program in Feminist Studies at Stanford University. Her previous books include The Family Silver: Essays on Relationships among Women; Social Science and the Self: Personal Essays on an Art Form; and The Mirror Dance: Identity in a Women's Community.