Review of I Know My Way Memoir
- chi starr
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- Latest Review: I Know My Way Memoir by Theresa Marafito with Linda Odubayo Thompson
Review of I Know My Way Memoir
Vision is extremely influential in one’s perception of the world, and for most, the absence of it feels like the end of the road. Many have wondered more than once, "How in the world am I supposed to survive without being able to see my environment?" Theresa Marafito along with her daughter, Linda Odubayo Thompson, answers this question in her engaging book, I Know My Way.
A memoir of Theresa’s life, I Know My Way pulls at one’s heartstrings as it walks one through the life of a young, blind Irish American girl determined to survive independently in the world of the ‘sighted’. After graduating high school at the young age of fifteen, Theresa goes on to graduate magna cum laude from Adelphi College at just nineteen years of age. At college, she meets her future husband, Jerry, who is to stick with her through all the troubles life was to throw at them. If there was ever a couple skilled at turning life’s lemons into lemonade, Theresa and Jerry were just that.
Theresa’s humour and vivid imagination shone clearly through her hilarious choice of words and compelling imagery. She leaves her readers with no choice but to succumb to helpless fits of laughter as she describes her experience waking up after the delivery of her first child. With all her talk of "little girls tap dancing" across her brain, to burglars and "little North Koreans" holding her hostage in a concentration camp, one finds it hard not to shake one’s head in laughter at the wildness of it all. Not to mention the "sadistic" alarm clock! The humour and vivid descriptions are my favourite aspects of the book.
The entire story was beautiful, and I loved every moment of it. However, it contained too many grammar errors, especially punctuation and capitalization errors. For example, almost all end-of-sentence punctuations within quotes were followed by words beginning with lowercase letters. Also, the dialogues from multiple characters tended to be mashed up into single paragraphs instead of being indented separately. This made it difficult to follow the conversation at times and detracted from my enjoyment of the book. Consequently, these were my least favourite aspects of the book.
As I mentioned before, I Know My Way is a brilliant book, and as such, I would have loved to rate it 4 out of 4 stars. However, due to the plentiful grammar errors, I have no choice but to give it 3 out of 4 stars.
Some people love reading about love and unity in the family. They enjoy walking with real-life characters as they brave life’s difficulties with the ever-present support of family and friends. Others wish to get a peek into the lives of the blind and how they manage the darkness in our world of colour. If any of these two categories of people sound like you, then you would most definitely enjoy Theresa’s I Know My Way.
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I Know My Way Memoir
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