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Oct 04, 2011 | ISBN 9781594485404 Buy
Oct 14, 2010 | ISBN 9781101444481 Buy
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Available from:
Oct 04, 2011 | ISBN 9781594485404
Oct 14, 2010 | ISBN 9781101444481
A “poignant” (Boston Globe) family memoir that gives new meaning to hindsight, insight, and forgivenessHeather Sellers is face-blind—that is, she has prosopagnosia, a rare neurological condition that describes the inability to recognize faces. Growing up, unaware of the reason for her perpetual confusion and anxiety, she took what cues she could from speech, hairstyle, and gait. The truth was revealed two decades later when Heather took the man she would marry home to meet her parents and discovered the astonishing truth about her family, herself, and living with mental illness. In this uplifting memoir, Sellers illuminates a deeper truth: that even in the most chaotic and heartbreaking of families, love may be seen and felt.
An unusual and uncommonly moving family memoir, with a twist that give new meaning to hindsight, insight, and forgiveness. Heather Sellers is face-blind-that is, she has prosopagnosia, a rare neurological condition that prevents her from reliably recognizing people’s faces. Growing up, unaware of the reason for her perpetual confusion and anxiety, she took what cues she could from speech, hairstyle, and gait. But she sometimes kissed a stranger, thinking he was her boyfriend, or failed to recognize even her own father and mother. She feared she must be crazy. Yet it was her mother who nailed windows shut and covered them with blankets, made her daughter walk on her knees to spare the carpeting, had her practice secret words to use in the likely event of abduction. Her father went on weeklong “fishing trips” (aka benders), took in drifters, wore panty hose and bras under his regular clothes. Heather clung to a barely coherent story of a “normal” childhood in order to survive the one she had. That fairy tale unraveled two decades later when Heather took the man she would marry home to meet her parents and began to discover the truth about her family and about herself. As she came at last to trust her own perceptions, she learned the gift of perspective: that embracing the past as it is allows us to let it go. And she illuminated a deeper truth-that even in the most flawed circumstances, love may be seen and felt.Watch a Video
Heather Sellers is the author of the story collection Georgia Under Water and several books on writing. A poet, essayist, and frequent contributor to O: The Oprah Magazine, The Sun, and other publications, she teaches at Hope College in Holland,… More about Heather Sellers
“You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know does not read like any memoir you know…Unless I’ve got prose blindness, Sellers is an ace…Her calm, glass-half- full-to-overflowing worldview could, in another writer’s hands, veer towards treacle, but she pulls it off beautifully. I predict exciting things for her: critical acclaim, hearty sales, and, perhaps best of all, long lines of strangers at every reading.” –The New York Times Book Review “Never forget a face? What if you couldn’t remember any? Sellers…learns to appreciate the upside: Being blind to faces makes it easier to see herself and those she loves as they really are.” –PEOPLE, four star review “Although [Sellers] can’t recognize others, in this book she has managed to find herself.” –Elle “Stunning…This is a memoir to be devoured in great chunks. The pleasure of reading it derives both from its graceful style and from its ultimate lesson: that seeing our past for what it really was, and forgiving those involved, frees us up to love them all the more, despite their (and our) limitations.” –Bookpage
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