While it appears many of my ASTU peers have the Canadian edition of Cockeyed (all with the same cover), there are a variety of other editions with different covers. I looked them up online and noticed how these various covers worked to strengthen the emancipation rhetoric (Couser, pg.44) of the memoir or perhaps reinforced hegemonic values. My copy’s cover looks like this:

The cover is very simple, mostly black and white, with very little text and no quotes or additional information except that it is a memoir. Most notably, however, the man on the cover, Ryan presumably, is shown without a face. As Laurie described in class, this was a way for the cover artist to show how blind people are often ignored, rejected, or otherwise treated as an unimportant “other”. By portraying Ryan faceless and only as a disabled body (notice the inclusion of the cane and glasses), the artist has shown how blind people are often overlooked by others. The able-bodied majority only sees them for their disability rather than the sum of their parts. In this cover, Ryan lacks individuality or identity, only his blindness is left. The cover calls attention to these problematic social attitudes and thus is an addition to the variety of other elements the text has that makes it a rhetoric of emancipation. On the other hand however, I find the back of my edition to be in stark contrast to this. It is my understanding that authors typically do not choose what is put on the back of their books, but that the publishing company chooses this.

I felt that this was evident on my copy’s back cover due to the way it portrays Ryan’s disability as something he might overcome and that his story serves to inspire able-bodied people. This is achieved in a similar way to this advertisement’s approach to disability, as we discussed in class. It could be argued that this edition and this edition have a similar effect by having very bright, attention-grabbing covers and inspirational backs that work to limit its “counterhegemonic potential” (Couser, pg.47).

I found the differences between the editions to be very intriguing because although they each exist for the same purpose of capturing peoples attention, they approach this in very different ways. Some editions reinforce the stigma surrounding disability by suggesting that it is an issue that can be worked through or overcome if the affected individual has a positive attitude. It suggests that if “they” can do it, “we” can do it too! While other editions or covers have the opposite effect due to the way they critique that stigma.