The Kindness Matters Podcast
So. Much. Division. Let's talk about how to change that. Re-engage as neighbors, friends, co-workers and family. Let's set out to change the world. Strike that. Change A World. One person at a time, make someone's life a little better and then do it again tomorrow and the day after that, through kindness.
Kindness is a Super-Power that each of us has within us. It is so powerful it has the potential to change not only your life but those around you, too. Let's talk about kindness.
The Kindness Matters Podcast
When Nature Heals What Humanity Breaks
What happens when kindness goes wrong? When James Francisco Bonilla was legally blind, well-meaning strangers pulled him into busy intersections, walked him into call boxes, and nearly guided him off cliffs – all while trying to "help." These harrowing yet illuminating experiences form just part of his remarkable journey from a visually impaired Puerto Rican child facing racial discrimination to becoming a nationally recognized social justice educator.
Born with congenital cataracts and losing most of his remaining vision after a racially motivated assault at age nine, Bonilla's world changed dramatically when groundbreaking ultrasonic surgery restored partial sight to his right eye at nineteen. This physical transformation paralleled his growing awareness of social injustice, propelling him into the early disability rights movement of the 1970s. Through sit-ins and advocacy work, he confronted systems that routinely marginalized people with disabilities – including a counselor who tried steering him toward running a newspaper kiosk rather than pursuing higher education.
"I was more disabled by my environment and social discrimination than by my physical blindness," Bonilla explains, challenging us to reconsider how society creates barriers beyond physical limitations. His powerful perspective emerges from navigating multiple identities: as a bilingual Puerto Rican child mistakenly placed in "slow classes" by nuns who viewed his accent as a speech impediment, as a legally blind person constantly underestimated, and as someone grappling with family mental illness.
Perhaps most transformative was Bonilla's discovery of healing through nature – encounters with great horned owls and coyotes gave him "a sense that I was not alone when I felt the most alone." This connection with the natural world ultimately guided him toward both personal healing and environmental advocacy.
Looking for an inspiring memoir that challenges conventional narratives about disability? Pre-order Bonilla's "An Eye for an I: Growing Up with Blindness, Bigotry and Family Mental Illness," releasing November 4th from University of Minnesota Press. As he powerfully states, "blindness didn't just happen to me, it happened for me" – a profound reframing that invites us all to reconsider our understanding of adversity, kindness, and true social justice.
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Hello everyone and welcome to the Kindness Matters podcast. I'm your host, mike Rathbun. On this podcast, we promote positivity, empathy and compassion because we believe that kindness is alive and well, and there are people and organizations that you may not have heard of in the world, making their communities a better place for everyone, and we want you to hear their stories. On this podcast, we talk about matters of kindness because kindness matters. Hey, hello and welcome everybody to the Kindness Matters podcast. I am your host, mike Rathbun. I hope you're doing well, I hope you're having a fantastic week and I hope you're being kind. Remember that if you would like a little bit of kindness, a little bit of uplifting news, a little bit of positivity in your email box every month, please don't forget to subscribe to the Kindness Matters podcast newsletter. You can do that. There's a link in the show notes at the end. I like to highlight people who are making a positive difference in this world, and you can be part of that as well, just by subscribing. My guest today is really awesome.
Speaker 1:His name is James Francisco Bonilla. He is a New York-born Puerto Rican writer and retired professor emeritus of cultural competence and leadership at Hamlin University in St Paul, minnesota. James was born with congenital cataracts and has never had sight in his left eye. Following a racially motivated assault at the age of nine, he lost much of his remaining sight in the right eye. Ten years later, a medical breakthrough restored the sight to his right eye and, searching for relief and inspiration, he discovered unexpected solace in the natural world, which led him toward both personal healing and advocacy work. Because of his experiences, james was drawn into the early disability rights movement, which later helped ground him's work as a nationally recognized social justice educator and environmentalist.
Speaker 1:James received his doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Education in Organizational Leadership. That's easy for me to say. No, it's not. He is a former chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee to the National Conference on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in American Higher Education. He's made hundreds of presentations to universities, conferences and human service organizations in the area of diversity, including outdoor education and environmental programs. His memoir An Eye for an Eye Growing Up with Blindness, bigotry and Family Mental Illness is set to be released by the University of Minnesota Press on November 4th. In it, he invites readers to empathize and consider their own potential to be of service in a broken, beautiful world. So very nice to have you here, james. I really, really appreciate you. When our mutual friend, deb Holtz suggested you, and part of her selling point was the fact that you're blind, and I was kind of thinking that the whole episode might be kind of about that. But really there's so very much more to your story that involves kindness, isn't there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I tried to write it so that it would not be sort of the one-dimensional. Here's a disabled person who suffers, who overcomes, and blah, blah, blah, because I think that's. That's unfortunately a trope that happens often for disabled people. They don't you, they're not seen beyond their disability, and I was really interested in exploring the connection between my being having been. Now. You know that I had surgery when I was 19,. Right?
Speaker 1:Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Okay, no, I I was. I was initially interested in exploring the relationship of being legally blind for that decade to being Puerto Rican similarities and differences and then, in the process, I ended up writing about family mental illness, including my own, and it was like I didn't know that I was going in that direction.
Speaker 1:So there it was like I didn't know that I was going in that direction.
Speaker 2:So there it was, you know, so it's a complex. Yeah, it's complex it is.
Speaker 1:there's nothing about life that is not complex, right? Yeah, yeah, um, because, and I alluded, yeah, and I alluded to this, I think, in the intro, because you were born with genital cataracts in your left eye, just your left eye. Right, they were in both eyes, but the one in my left eye was quite big so I couldn't see out of it.
Speaker 2:But I had one in my right eye. When I got hit, rather than take me immediately to the hospital, the good brothers left me in the infirmary for three days and that's where it got the blood thickened up, the cataract, so badly that I couldn't see. Once I was done there, I couldn't see the big E in the eye chart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, wow, yeah, Even I can see that and that's saying a lot, yeah, so, and that whole horseshoe to the eye thing, that was a I was going to say a racial Nine-year-olds, really understand their behavior.
Speaker 2:I mean, they clearly absorb messages. So this kid, I was kicking his butt in horseshoes and when I came out I was looking for a horseshoe underneath a stairwell, which was very dark, and when I came out he had actually found it and he whipped it at my face saying catch, spick found it. And he whipped it at my face saying catch, spick. And you know, because I had not really adjusted, I caught it with my one good eye and that set into motion a whole series of events that that led to my being legally blind for the next decade wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:And what was this?
Speaker 2:this is pretty amazing, you know, because they couldn't do surgery on young people with cataracts, because the fibers that held the lens of the eye on were very thick and hard when you're young. Yeah, okay, they could. They could do it with old folks like us now, but they couldn't do it with young people.
Speaker 2:And then they came up with this new approach, using ultrasonic sound, so not to gross out your listeners, but basically they had a vibe they had a vibrating wand that basically shattered the lens of my right eye and they had a teeny little vacuum that vacuumed it out and with the vacuum and the lens went the cataract. So I was given a contact. Now it's like you're in and out one day, it's all laser. Poof, poof, poof, poof and boom, you're done. They can't do the contact and they implant it now.
Speaker 1:So that's, that's incredible, um. But and so this whole, all of your combined experiences, kind of led you to and again I think I talked about that a little bit in the intro how it this kind of drew you to nature. That nature is where you found healing, right from, yes, everything in your life, um, from the discrimination you were facing, the blindness well and and some mental health issues.
Speaker 2:Great if it was just my mom. It was primarily my mom and, um, you know, uh, yeah, so I ended up, uh, going outdoors when things would get really bad, yeah, and that's where I found solace and I found, you know, spirits and nature in the form of animals that, just you know, really blessed me. You know, in the book I talk about being in the woods and great horned owl would land in a tree next to me, or walking down a trail and a coyote or at least I could tell it was a coyote because of the color of the eyes in my flashlight would fall. So it it. It gave me a sense that I was not alone when I felt the most alone yeah, yeah, oh, for sure.
Speaker 1:Uh, that's, that's amazing. Um, and then it all led you into um, all of that, all those experiences kind of led you into you. You went to college, you got a doctoral degree from University of Mass Way before that.
Speaker 2:I mean, I had quite a gap between finishing my undergraduate work and I had surgery done on me when I was 19 and I got the site back but I had already sort of got into this track of working with disabled populations. But I had already sort of got into this track of working with disabled populations.
Speaker 2:So there's a great film called Crip Camp that was done by the Obamas about this camp in upstate New York for disabled young people, and a lot of those young people ended up being leaders in the emerging disability rights movement in the 1970s. I ended up working at that camp, and so that's how. And then, like a lot of them, when I finished my stint at the camp, I moved to California, which is really where it was happening around disability rights issues. I had my second sit in there.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I had that was. That would have been 1976 or 77.
Speaker 1:What year was that? Was that? Well, I don't know the 70s were the best times for protests, weren't they? Yeah, yeah, but it was in the 60s. Do it, and ironically, it was in a really progressive governor's office.
Speaker 2:We took over his office, jerry brown, in his first stint as governor of california, in many ways a very progressive guy, but it's another example of how disability issues just fall under the radar and just just you know, he was always fiscally conservative and he cut funds for transportation for disabled people.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're in a wheelchair or you're blind, you need transportation, I mean. So we ended up taking over his office, but it was just sort of ironic that one of the most progressive governors in history were the one that we had to take over his office.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure I remember, did he not run how many runs for president? Did he make One or two, I? Think 76, I think he ran, I don't know. Yeah, I can't, that's, I'm not that old, I can't remember that far back you know my line is I know, here's my line, you can use it.
Speaker 2:As I get older, I get better looking, but my memory gets worse. But I can live with that.
Speaker 1:You know it's OK, Exactly so feel free to use that line anytime. I paraphrase that a lot yeah, so, okay, so this was now. Was that before or after? That was before you went to get your doctoral degree? Oh yeah, well, after. I didn't go for my doctorate until 15 years later.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. Yeah, yeah, well, after. I didn't go for my doctorate until 15 years later.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. Yeah, yeah, but you've traveled quite a bit, Was it as?
Speaker 2:part of your. Well, one of the interesting things was the reason when I left Camp Jened which was where the Crip Camp film was done was I had to do an internship for my major in therapeutic recreation and there is a very well-known rehab, recreation and rehab center in San Francisco known as the Pomeroy Center. So I ended up getting an internship there in 75. And then when I graduated I got a job there. So I lived in San Francisco 75 to roughly 77.
Speaker 1:Those were the glory days.
Speaker 1:It's so funny that you say it. When I, in 79, I went into the Air Force and I had to do some of my training at an Air Force base called Castle Air Force Base. It was out in Merced, california Central Valley area, but I didn't have any other way. I had no idea how to get there except to fly into San Francisco and take a bus, and I flew in San Francisco. I got there and I got down to the bus station and I said I need to go to Merced and he goes, there aren't any more tonight. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? Are you familiar with where the bus station is in San Francisco?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the most exciting neighborhood in San Francisco. That's as nice as a way I can put it Market Street. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I lived not too far from Market Street for a long time.
Speaker 1:Oh, my gosh and I had this. He seemed like a really nice guy and he volunteered to help me get my stuff stored in a locker and he said well, I know where you can crash for the night. Oh boy, I was young and naive. I was like 19. And then he bought me. That was my first jack-in-the-box, and none of this has anything to do with what we're talking about here but, I'm with San Francisco. It has to do with kindness, kind of he had ulterior motives.
Speaker 2:I thought it was going to go there. It's a.
Speaker 1:Navy guy, go figure. No, I take that. Oh my god, I might have to cut that out, but all of this informed you that your sense of racial justice is that fair to say?
Speaker 2:I mean all of your experiences, you know. Interestingly, I think my first real putting my foot into the stream of social justice was about disability, okay. But you know, I had lots of experiences growing up that were not about my being blind.
Speaker 2:Even before I had the eye accident I went to a Catholic parochial school. Even before I had the eye accident I went to a Catholic parochial school and because I was bilingual and I had an accent, the nuns told my mother that I had a speech impediment and I had to go into the slow class. Now you know, I was no dummy and of course that's how I got into trouble and got sent to Catholic reform school, because I was just bored in the slow class, right. But it turned out that I wasn't alone in that experience.
Speaker 2:I think I did some research to find that about the age that I was in Catholic school and got sent to the slow class, 80% of the Puerto Rican kids in New York never graduated high school. So there was clearly an impression that difference was deficit. And again, that applies also to issues of blindness, you know. But I didn't have that awareness at that age. It really wasn't until I went to San Francisco and got involved in the disability rights movement that I started learning about stereotypes and how systems exclude people with disabilities and how people with disabilities are some of the poorest, if not the poorest group in the country. Even though we were the largest minority, we were the poorest and continue to be the poorest people with disabilities.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah, and it's go ahead well, just to make it even more relevant. You know, with all the, the, the quote-unquote, big beautiful bill has cut out tens of thousands of people with disabilities from Medicaid, and these are people who didn't have very much money to begin with, so that, unfortunately, that systematic expression of ableism continues. It's worse.
Speaker 1:I didn't know if I wanted to bring up the current stuff, but you did so. Here we are, yeah. I know you wanted to talk more about kindness, so feel free to take me there I mean, it's true, the policies that are being pushed current time, real time do seem to do seem to, whether intentional or not, do seem to target those underserved or the marginalized.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have family members who are part of the LGBTQ community and if you're elderly and you don't have much of an income, you're getting screwed royally. Yeah, so I mean, but you're right, it's about people who are often were at the fringes or the edges of society are really getting you know, piled on Absolutely, and that is the definition of anti-kindness, is it not?
Speaker 1:I mean, when you're directly pushing policies that harm people who are already probably not doing so well in the first place, that's not very kind.
Speaker 2:No, a big unkind bill.
Speaker 1:That's what I would call it A big ugly unkind bill. That's what I would call it big ugly unkind bill. Is there? Yes, you, you, kb, I don't know. Yeah, it's too bad and and it's frustrating and um well, and a lot of those policies are also taking money from nonprofits and you know that includes food banks, and we're back to the poorest of the poor or meals on wheels.
Speaker 2:USA, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:USA.
Speaker 2:We are not living in the kindest of times we are not.
Speaker 1:It was the it was. I can't even say it was the best of times, it was the unkindest of times.
Speaker 2:yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:But um, so, and this is it's. It's fascinating to me how all of these things led you to who you are and where you are today. You know, yeah, I mean as a as a kid with cataracts you never would have dreamed that you would have grown up to become an advocate for, for social justice.
Speaker 2:I don't think I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, and I would imagine we're probably talking the 60s well my accident, yeah, my accident for my eye when I was nine.
Speaker 2:It was 1964 okay and then it was corrected. At least my right eye I still don't see out of my left, but it was the right eye was corrected in 1974, okay, and by that time I was starting to, I was already in college looking at therapeutic recreation and you know, the programs were very much sort of social service but not social justice, and it really wasn't until I went to California that I started to make the connection that you know, yeah, you can't have one without the other yeah, really you can't, um, I I just I think, because I read a comment from you, um, and I'll just read what I've got here about how you were illustrating how society sometimes let you down, and you said and I think we were talking about your book, you can correct me if I'm wrong you said I want people to grasp that I was more disabled by my environment and social discrimination by others than by my physical blindness.
Speaker 1:Can you explain that?
Speaker 2:a little bit I mean, I understand it.
Speaker 1:I think I can grasp it.
Speaker 2:I can give an example that I think might be helpful. So you know, I, when I was still in college I was no, I was still a senior in high school and I was getting ready to apply for programs in therapeutic recreation but one of my mentors said to me you need to go to the Department of Rehabilitation Services, which was a state agency, and have them sign a form verifying that you're legally blind. So I said, okay, I mean, this was before the day of faxes and all that. So I made my way down and this man who is, you know, in an office and is, you know, getting near retirement age, and he welcomes me in, very nice, yeah. And I say, well, you know, I'm here because blah, blah, blah. And he says Well, james, this is your lucky day Because I just got in this posted announcement that Grand Central Station has an opening for somebody to run one of their newspaper kiosks and you will make a much better living doing a newspaper kiosk than you would ever do.
Speaker 2:So I want to encourage you forget about college, sign here and we'll get you this job. Now you and I both know that newspaper kiosks barely exist anymore. Oh, that's true, that newspaper kiosks barely exist anymore oh that's true.
Speaker 2:But it was very emblematic of the way that disabled people, particularly blind people, get sort of funneled into low-paying jobs, you know, piano tuners. So I was uncharacteristically tactful. I said, well, sir, thank you very much, but I want to sort of be like you, helping people and I want to get my degree in therapeutic recreation. So if you could just sign this, and he was kind of taken aback because I'm sure at the time he thought this is what my job is, is to get people jobs. But he, you know kindly, he signed it and I've been told by my mentor make sure you don't leave there without getting a copy of it, because the state was infamous for losing things. So I, you know, I got a copy of it so that I could make sure that my application and it was funny because I ended up I was up for a full scholarship and then Richard Nixon came into office and, unlike today, or like today, he ended up cutting a lot of the funding for students with disabilities. I mean, I'm still able to cobble together that and get a couple of summer jobs.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that was my first real run in personally with how systems, institutions, perpetuate ableism. I hadn't really ever experienced that. In some ways, I was very lucky because I went to a high school Well before I went to high school. I went to junior high school and they wanted before I went to high school. I went to junior high school and they wanted to teach me typing, because that's another thing that blind people could do, and I was like I hated typing and I had no interest in it. My mother was a secretary and she could type my paper, so I didn't need it and I didn't want it and I didn't want to get funneled into that.
Speaker 2:Fair by the time I got to high school. I had some amazing teachers in high school who got me involved in the ecology club, got me involved in the swim team and really helped build up my resume for college. Yeah so I was very. So. You know I have good experiences with institutions and not such good experiences. Yeah so and I was just lucky, I took advantage of the good ones.
Speaker 1:Hey, I mean that's yeah. So your, your interest, I mean I think, yeah, doing the type of work that you're interested in, the work in social justice, I believe is a kind because you're fighting for people who have really no voice, right.
Speaker 2:Often yeah.
Speaker 1:Or very little voice.
Speaker 2:Or nobody wants to listen yeah.
Speaker 1:True, and so that's cool I'm struck by. There's a chapter in your book you know the one I'm going to that as good as kindness is, as nice as we think of kindness, there's a dark side to kindness. Isn't there? It could kill you. Well, this is where you know. I tread lightly, not once, but three times almost.
Speaker 2:Yeah almost three times. But this is where I have learned to tread lightly, because I think people's intentions are good, oh yeah, people's intentions are good, oh yeah, but but the difference between their intentions and the effect of their behavior is really kind of can, like you say, go down a dark road that you don't want to go. And I have a road example. So I was still legally blind. I was standing on the corner of 59th and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, new York, and very busy place. Bloomingdale's was right across the street and I was waiting for a friend of mine and I just got my cane and I was holding the cane at my side. But, you know, and this friend of mine was always late, you know, I told her you'd be late for your own funeral and this friend of mine was always late.
Speaker 2:I told her you'll be late for your own funeral. And again she was late. And all of a sudden, this hand grabs my bicep and it's a big hand and starts to pull me into the street and I'm so stunned by this. It's a busy street, oh my God. Yeah, it's like five lanes. And I hear you, you know tires screeching, I hear taxi cabs honking their horns, I hear people cussing. So I know that I'm going across against the light.
Speaker 2:And halfway across I finally got my bearings. Enough to say to the person who turned out to be huge I mean, he was at least 280 pounds, probably, was 6'5" African-American guy with a construction helmet on, you know, and I said, mr, what you doing? Yeah, and without missing a beat, he says well, you know, this is a really busy intersection, so I thought you would need some help getting across the street at this time of day. And at this point the light changes and now all these people are coming across the crosswalk and he's like a blocker, opening up a hole for me, and he's so big that people moved right, well, it's true, he gets me to the other side and finally lifts me up and puts me on the sidewalk. And you know I said well, I mean, that was very nice, but I was just waiting for somebody over there and I can tell by his face.
Speaker 2:As little as I could see, you could just feel yeah that he was really confounded and he starts to walk away. Yes, and again, his intentions, I'm sure, were honorable. He gets 10 feet away and he says to me do you need me to take you back? And I was like, no, it's okay.
Speaker 1:So yeah, please no.
Speaker 2:So I mean again, you know and I think this is where it becomes hard for some folks who get sensitive when you know, you point out that sometimes kindness can actually not have the intended effect. There's a woman named Rebecca Taussig who's written a great memoir about being in a wheelchair and she speaks eloquently to this that you know, many times in her life people have done stuff that not only wasn't helpful but you know, was dangerous. You know, the other story that I'll tell you about is um. I was at Cortland and I had a very bad sophomore year and luckily, again a teacher, um, ended up convincing me to go to London, and I wasn't supposed to be able to go because I was a sophomore, but she was like this very legendary professor who, when she was an undergraduate, shot the weather vane off the top of Wesley College, because that's what she did. She was from Virginia Backhills. So if Marcia said this is going to happen, it's going to happen.
Speaker 2:She got me to go to London, which was literally life-saving. I had almost taken my life because I was so miserable. And when I'm in London I sort of I'm at the pub, I'm a little bit, you know, a couple of sheaths to the wind, and there's a young woman who's you know, I'm kind of attracted to, and she says, oh, would you need help getting to the subway stop to go back home? And I said sure, and I made a mistake, I folded my cane and I put it in my back pocket. They should warn you about this when you're doing training. But she's walking and it's at night. But she's walking and it's at night. And you know, at the time London had these call boxes for bobbies that were on the telephone poles or on poles. And she's grabbing me from my elbow.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And, rather than letting me hold her, she's you know, she's grabbing me. So from a distance it would look like I was guiding her and she didn't really understand. And we're having this intense conversation, including talking about, you know, old boyfriends, old girlfriends, and I'm hoping it's leading up to something, and all of a sudden, bam, right right on my forehead, I have this crushing impact and, unbeknownst to me, she had walked me into one of the bobby's call boxes.
Speaker 2:Oh, my gosh and laid me out flat. I mean I, I was seeing stars like in those old cartoons, when this you know, and pulling around and again she didn't. She just didn't understand how to walk with a person who had a visual disability. Yeah, and yeah so you know there's a third time, but I don't need to tell you that one because it involved the same woman and it was yeah.
Speaker 1:So, anyhow, I believe there was some waterfalls involved.
Speaker 2:yeah, we were I was still trying. We got back to courtland and I was still trying to see if I could, you know, woo her over from her existing boyfriend and we took a walk around sunset and it was a SUNY, not SUNY Ithaca College in Ithaca, new York, near Cornell, and this canyon had a waterfall at one end but we were standing below it and we couldn't hear ourselves talk. So she suggested well, let's go walk around the edge, because then it'd be nice. And it was just the time of day where the shadows were long and it was fall and I never saw well when the light.
Speaker 2:I didn't see well before, but once the light was fading I was terrible. And we're walking and talking and I'm on the outside, near this, the edge, and again, I'm sort of caught up in this conversation with this, you know, love interest, and she doesn't tell me that we're, the trail has made a sharp right and that there's a washout. So the next thing I know I'm in midair, oh jeez, and I'm going holy listeners right, you can say that and you know, um make a long story short.
Speaker 2:You know, I got down about 15. I hit the side of the cliff and there were some small cedars and I was able to grab them and arrest my fall and then crawl back up to the trail. But by this point I'm bleeding and I get up and I to the trail and I don't even stand up, I just roll over onto the trail. But by this point I'm bleeding and I get up and I to the trail and I don't even stand up, I just roll over onto the trail and by this point there's a bunch of undergrads from Cornell and I'll never forget this one guy. He's laughing. He's laughing. He said man, what are you blind? I said to him fuck you idiot, I am blind oh god, that's gonna throw off the speakers, but yeah
Speaker 1:yeah, sorry, sorry, no, no no, I laughed too hard, it was me okay good, um, yeah, as a matter of fact, uh, wow, I I'm just. I'm so inspired by you, james, because you've had a lifetime of negative experiences and yet you somehow turn them into fighting for people, for causes that are needed in this country in this world today and I have a little amount of time left, but I want to talk about your book. Your book is coming out November 4th. Yes, university of Minnesota Press.
Speaker 2:Yes, we will have a link to that. You can pre-order it too, get 30% off, and I'm a cheapskate, so I think it's a good idea, right there with you.
Speaker 1:Right there with you? Yeah, no, and I think if anybody wants to be inspired or to learn about what it's like to to go through life with, with some of these well, with disability, with racism, with everything that you've you've dealt with and be inspired by that I don't know if you wrote it to be inspiring, but Well, not so much.
Speaker 2:I wrote. It can be, I wrote it. Yeah, the title is an I E-Y-E for an I letter. I growing up with blindness and bigotry and family mental illness.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I say in the book is that blindness didn't just happen to me, it happened for me. That, as much as you want to say well, you know, aren't you inspiring? You did this on your own. You know there was key people along the way, out of kindness or professional integrity, that made all the difference. So, you know, I just took advantage, like many of your you know listeners, I took advantage of the opportunities that were there and I tried to deflect the ones that got in the way. I don't know if that's particularly inspiring. I think that's what non-disabled people do all the time. I just put it in the context of having been blind and having been Puerto Rican and then also dealing with my family's mental illness. But you know, I guess I don't. I appreciate you're saying you're inspired by it. At the same time, I feel like, you know, most people would probably, given the circumstances, the opportunities that I had would do some.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's not the same choices, it's living a life right.
Speaker 2:It's living a life. It makes me and you normal and we, you know, we wade through the stuff that we have to wade through and luckily, I think, I ended up with some great opportunities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will disagree partially with that. I think there are plenty of people out there who think that they don't have a voice when they experience that kind of thing, some of the things that you experienced, and they think nobody will listen to me and you know who am I to speak up. So I would disagree a little bit with that you're allowed, it's your program.
Speaker 2:Hey, it is.
Speaker 1:I really, really, really appreciate your time today, james. It's been so great talking to you and for my listeners. Don't forget to go to the show notes and get the link to that book. It'll be out. You can order it right now.
Speaker 2:I think you just go to University of Minnesota, press their website and just type in either James Francisco Bonilla or an I, e-y-e for an I and it'll come up. Oh perfect, yeah, so pre-order because you get money off Exactly.
Speaker 1:It's a tight economy. Exactly. Oh, here we go again. No, we're not going to do that. No, we all go there, we'll go there. Thank you, james, I appreciate it. You have a fantastic week.
Speaker 2:Thank you for inviting me. Yeah, thank you for inviting me. This was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining us today on the Kindness Matters podcast with my guest, James Francisco Bonilla. We hope you're leaving with something uplifting, inspiring or simply a reminder that kindness truly does make a difference, If you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1:be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss a moment of encouragement. You can also follow us on social media for daily reminders of kindness in action, and don't forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter. You can also follow us on social media for daily reminders of kindness in action, and don't forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter, where we share even more heartwarming stories to brighten up your month. Until next time, remember kindness matters, and so do you.
