By SARI ZEIDLER
The North Merrick native was hit by a car, leaving her injured and destroying plans for a summer of kayaking, hiking and enjoying the great outdoors with her husband and two children. What she did have was a chance to read Jose Saramago's Nobel Prize-winning novel, "Blindess."
Being blind and an active member of the National Federation of the Blind, which condemned "Blindness," in 2007, Grassman had heard that the novel uses sight impairment as a metaphor for the breakdown of society, but had not wanted to read it. She thought, perhaps, people were overreacting or that it wasn't worth her time. She was used to blindness being used as a metaphor for the frightening, terrible or even what she calls "ridiculously" good. But her eventual decision to read "Blindness" elicited new frustration and prompted a new personal mission -- to write a book of her own that defines blindness as she knows it -- as normalcy.
Grassman, herself, is anything but normal, fitting the classic description of an overachiever. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Princeton, a Masters of Education from Pace University and a law degree from Hofstra. She gave up practicing law full time to teach English in the inner city through the New York State Teaching Fellows program, a highly competitive program that fast tracks professionals in other fields to becoming teachers in urban settings. She is a dedicated mother who finds time to read to her children and take them to extracurricular activities. Her first published novel, "The Sight Sickness," her response to "Blindness," was written in only a month.
"The book came out of a very high degree of frustration of the continual use of blindness either, in and of itself, or as blindness to depict something metaphorical or even literally terrible," Grassman said. "Basically, authors, artists, poets, even dancers, sculptors have used blindness as something awful all the time. There's never seemed to be any sort of positive attribute, or, if there is, it's somehow ridiculously positive. Somehow you're more in tune with nature, you're more in tune with the spirits. It's always something out of the ordinary, off the beaten path or out of center. It's always something extra positive or extra negative that has nothing to do with the realities of blindness as a disability or the realities of blindness for blind people."
Grassman's reality, as she explained it, is similar to the realities of other parents in North Merrick. Her daughter, a student at Merrick Avenue Middle School, where Grassman was once a student, and her son, a student in the North Merrick Elementary School District, enjoy reading the Harry Potter series and playing games after school. They too are completely blind. Her husband, Gary, helps with dinner and enjoys watching baseball -- but sometimes needs a monocle to do it because he is legally blind. She doesn't describe their suburban life as scary or extraordinary. Her concern is that Saramago's depiction of the blind focuses too much on one aspect of a person's life, allowing them to be defined in a way that furthers stereotypes.
"I stayed up all night reading it, not because I couldn't put it down and thought, wow, I want to see what happens next, but because my blood pressure was skyrocketing," she said. She described the novel as unrealistically portraying blind people who can't care for themselves in any way, including dressing themselves or using the toilet, a depiction that Grassman's novel clearly disputes.
"The two exercises here," Grassman said of "The Sight Sickness," "are to inform how blindness is perpetually used in a negative manner and simply to rebut the novel."
"Blindness" was made into a movie in 2008, and despite a cast that included well-known celebrities like Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover, received largely negative reviews. Grassman refused to see it, and heard mostly negative criticism from people who did. "But, you know, I have to ask myself, are they saying it's depressing because they recognize people who know me, how blindness and blind people are rendered, or are they saying it's terrible simply because the cinematography stunk, they didn't like the acting," she said.
"No one is accusing Jose Saramago as saying I'm out to get the blind people," Grassman said. Instead, she said the book proves that many people don't understand the realities of what it is like to be blind. By learning more, she hopes people will become more tolerant and less frightened. "People don't know what they can and can't do in a certain situation until they're faced with that situation," she said.
"The Sight Sickness" is available on Amazon.com, iUniverse.com or by request at book retailers.
Comments about this story? Szeidler@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 236.
