this book is available on cassette from Recording for the Blind.
Incidentally, the author of the review is blind herself.
kelly
from the January-february issue of the ragged edge
Book reviews
A woman of her time--and ours
Review by Sally Rosenthal
Helen Keller: A Life by Dorothy Herrmann. New York: Knopf, 1998.
Hardcover, 394 pages, $30 (Amazon.com Price, $21).
Helen Keller I know who you are. You read Ragged Edge. You're
disabled and hip, a cool crip. You expect your favorite crip
magazine to be just as cool. So I know what you're thinking when
you see that this issue's review is of a Helen Keller biography.
Yet another one. Another able-bodied dissection or sanctification
of the ultimate historical icon of feminine disability. Believe me,
I know what you're thinking. At best, you want to turn the page; at
worst, you're already contacting the subscription department to
cancel further delivery. If there's one thing cool crips don't need
in the 1990s, you figure, it's another look at Keller's life.
Oh, how wrong you are.
Another look--a radically different look--at arguably the most
famous disabled woman of the twentieth century is just what you do
need. And you will find it in Helen Keller: A Life, a fresh,
riveting interpretation of Keller's life and work by Dorothy
Herrmann.
Don't feel bad, though; I almost dismissed Herrmann's book, too,
when I heard the promotion of it on my local National Public Radio
station. Herrmann was scheduled to be interviewed about the new
biography on an upcoming talk show. This particular listener, never
a fan of other Keller biographies which seemed to paint her as a
saint or hopelessly enmeshed in a symbiotic relationship with her
teacher Annie Sullivan Macy, wasn't overly enthusiastic about a new
book. Recalling all the childhood "inspirational"i accounts I had
read of Keller's life (as well as the occasional adult memoirs), I
wrote off Herrmann's new work before the talk show began.
Oh, how wrong I was.
Dorothy Herrmann, a biographer who did not describe herself as
disabled (leading me to assume she was nondisabled--and the book
information on her gave me no information to the contrary),
surprised me with her insightful, new slant on Helen Keller--who
emerged from Hermann's interview as more of a mover and shaker than
a plaster saint. The woman Herrmann described was a staunch
supporter of labor unions, the Soviet revolution and her fellow
disabled comrades in arms--certainly not the heroic figure of
grade-school library books who "itriumphed"i over her disability.
Herrmann, I began to suspect as I listened to the interview, just
might be on to something.
What ultimately won me over, however, was the manner in which the
author spoke of Helen Keller in connection with other disabled
people, disabled women in particular. The Keller she wrote about
was a woman with her own deaf-blind reality, a reality Herrmann
reported was just as valid as any nondisabled reality. Without
denying the very real limitations of Keller's life, Herrmann was
able to bring her subject to life as a passionate, vital woman,
albeit one whose life might always remain somewhat of an enigma.
Herrmann's astute observations and articulation of them changed my
mind about her subject. No longer a shadowy disabled saint, Helen
Keller became both my foremother and sister.
I picked up Herrmann's book a day later on a visit to my local
bookstore. And I was not disappointed. Helen Keller: A Life turned
out to be just as fascinating as the radio interview.
As with any biography, the basic historical facts are there:
Keller's birth in 1880 in a small Alabama town, her deaf-blindness
before the age of two due to a still-debated cause, the arrival of
a half-blind, poverty-stricken Annie Sullivan a few years
later--and, the rest, as the saying goes, is history. What amazed
and intrigued me as a disabled woman, however, were the aspects of
Keller's life that had never quite made it into previous accounts.
As Herrmann points out, the Helen Keller with whom most people are
familiar is a stereotypical sexless paragon who was able to
overcome deaf-blindness and work tirelessly to promote charities
and organizations associated with other blind and deaf-blind
individuals.
A recent traveling photographic exhibition sponsored by the
American Foundation for the Blind, an organization for which Keller
spent much of the latter part of her life working, did nothing to
dispel this common public legend (nor does the literature
distributed by the AFB and other associations with whom her name
and image are closely linked). Missing are the very things that
those of us with disabilities would find interesting and
empowering, aspects of Keller which would serve to make her a truly
real and believable woman.
But Herrmann makes those missing details an important part of her
book. Keller, a woman of staunch, radical convictions, supported
many causes of her day. A believer in the universality of all
people, Keller publicly espoused socialism, communism, radical
labor unions and strikes, and spoke out against US entry into World
War I. Not content to stop there, Keller managed to draw the
conclusion that people of her day with disabilities were also part
of the oppressed masses--and as deserving of dignity and liberation
as other oppressed groups. Not exactly the stuff of which plaster
saints are made--especially one who, in later life, was presented
by her close circle of companions (and the organizations who
benefited from her endorsement) as a triumphant, cheerful (read:
"ialmost normal"i) woman.
Keller, Dorothy Herrmann concludes, might well have been a willing
accomplice in the remaking of her image. Dependent both on her
companions for all daily care and communication with the outside
world and with the organizations for financial support, Keller
might have had no other option than to downplay the beliefs that
would have made her far more human than an able-bodied public
wanted.
Another event in the younger Keller's life might also, Herrmann
suspects, have caused her to become more publicly compliant.
Although she and a young socialist had fallen in love and applied
for a marriage license, her hopes were dashed by a complicated set
of circumstances--the family's disapproval, Annie Sullivan's fear
of usurpation, and, possibly, the potential groom's second
thoughts. The Keller who longed for sexual fulfillment and the
married life expected for most women of her time rarely appears in
other accounts, making Herrmann's biography the most complete and
complex we have.
Complex? Yes. Admittedly, Helen Keller: A Life is a new look at an
old subject, but the fact remains that that very subject herself
remains complex. Because of her very real severe disability and the
historical context in which she found herself, Keller will always,
to some extent, remain an enigma. Herrmann's book does much to
credit Keller with striving to carve out a personal and public
image for herself, no small feat for any woman of her time. The
controversies surrounding her relationships with Annie Sullivan
Macy, her other companions, her charitable organizations and a
public both drawn to and repelled by her remain at the end of
Herrmann's book.
Perhaps the task of any first-rate biographer is to ask more
questions than to provide concrete conclusions. No life, especially
one as singular as Helen Keller's, can be neatly parceled. Thanks
to Dorothy Herrmann, however, it has emerged, thirty years after
Keller's death, as a life of much more than stereotype and legend.
Sally Rosenthal frequently reviews books related to disability.
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