Helen Keller tells us about Anne Sullivan Macy, the woman who opened the world for her. Although the book was intended as a biography, it is also autobiographical in part since the lives of the author and subject were so closely intertwined for many years.
A detailed biography of Anne Sullivan Macy, the teacher and tutor of Helen Keller, that chronicles her early life and life-long dedication to helping Helen.
Most people know the story of Helen Keller who at the age of nineteen months had an illness that left her blind and deaf. A teacher was hired for Helen when she was six years old by the name of Anne Sullivan. Anne Sullivan (Macy) taught Helen how to communicate and acted as Helens eyes and ears for fifty years. She guided Helen through several schools, and ultimately Helen graduated from Radcliffe College with honors. Helen Keller, with Anne by her side, achieved worldwide fame for her work on behalf of the blind. The story of Anne Sullivan (Macy) is not well known. As a child, she herself was blind as well as poor, abused by her father, and lived for five years in an almshouse (poorhouse). This biography of Anne Sullivan (Macy) tells her story as she may have told it.
Draws on the archives of Helen Keller's estate and the unpublished memoirs of Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan, to trace Keller's transformation from a furious girl to a world-renowned figure.
Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, remain two of the best-known American women. But few people know how Sullivan came to her role as teacher of the deaf and blind Keller. Contrasting their lives with Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the era's prominent abolitionist, this book sheds light on the gender and disability expectations that affected the public perception of Sullivan and Keller. This book provides a fascinating insight into class, ethnicity, gender, and disability issues in the Gilded Age and Progressive-Era America.