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You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know book cover
You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know
A True Story of Family, Face Blindness, and Forgiveness
2010
First Published
3.58
Average Rating
368
Number of Pages

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 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

Avg Rating
3.58
Number of Ratings
2,762
5 STARS
19%
4 STARS
35%
3 STARS
33%
2 STARS
11%
1 STARS
2%
goodreads

Author

Heather Sellers
Heather Sellers
Author · 9 books
Heather Sellers has a PhD in English/Creative Writing from Florida State University. She’s a professor of English at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, where she teaches poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction writing courses. She won an NEA grant for fiction and her first book of fiction, Georgia Under Water, was part of the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers program.
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