The subtitle of “An Eye for an I” warns us the book will be packed: “Growing Up with Blindness, Bigotry, and Family Mental Illness.”

Retired Hamline University professor James Francisco Bonilla’s book is billed as a memoir. That’s accurate, but “Eye” tends not to go very deep into what he felt or what events meant because Bonilla, who is Puerto Rican and lives in Winona, also has a lot of other things on his mind. Chief among them are advocating for the rights of people with disabilities (as a result of a classmate’s racially motivated attack, he was legally blind for much of his life), offering tips on how to heal and recovering from an abusive childhood (his father was largely absent but his mother was emotionally and physically abusive).

The first chapter begins with what may be the grabbiest opening sentence I’ve read this year: “I’m five years old and being chased around our tiny one bedroom apartment in Forest Hills, New York, by my knife-wielding mother.”

It’s a slightly misleading sentence. Oh, it happened, but it may make readers believe Bonilla’s mother, Dee, will be more of a factor in the book than she is (ultimately, she’s diagnosed with a brain tumor and mental illness). But it’s an effective way to introduce us to the many challenges of the author’s life, which include a sexual assault, at least one attempt to harm himself, racism, a fall off a cliff and much more.

In order to fit it all into “An Eye for an I,” Bonilla structures the book more like a collection of short, non-chronological essays than a traditional memoir, each essay offering sometimes frustratingly brisk thoughts on a particular topic or event from his life. It would be great, for instance, to know more about Dee, who looms over the book but who disappears for long passages.

The tradeoff is that we learn a little about a lot of things. For instance, there’s an eye-opening, and potentially helpful, chapter called “Oh, So Much Shame!” that lists nine major categories of shame he has felt, including that he’s not Puerto Rican, blind or smart enough.

I suspect that chapter, which also offers a concise definition of the difference between guilt and shame, will hit home for many readers. It’s occasionally frustrating that Bonilla, who taught organizational leadership and conflict studies at Hamline, often pivots from examining his own life to quoting experts. And I wish he had pushed himself to go a little further beneath the surface of events, especially in some of the more troubling chapters of his life.

On the other hand, that Bonilla finds space for so many different viewpoints and such a variety of topics is a sign of what a generous, big-hearted book this is.

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An Eye for an I: Growing Up with Blindness, Bigotry, and Family Mental Illness

By: James Francisco Bonilla.

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 204 pages.

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