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Marketing and University Communication UW-Green Bay, CL 815 2420 Nicolet Drive Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 (920) 465-2626 E-mail: hildebrs@uwgb.edu Last update: 10/1/07 |
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In
the News Archive - Year:
March 7, 2004 Jean Peerenboom column: By Jean Peerenboom "While researching my first book on anti-radicalism and anti-feminism
in the 1920s, I found lists of the most dangerous women in America. Helen
Keller was on them," said the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay associate
professor. "All I knew about Keller was the 'Miracle Worker' story. It
struck me as really curious and that's how I got started."
Nielsen's book proves that Keller did grow up and become a political
activist for several causes, including the blind. Keller lost her hearing
and sight after an illness at an early age. Her family engaged teacher
Anne Sullivan, who taught her to communicate through finger-spelling and
lip reading by putting her hands on the speaker's face. She can claim
to have touched the faces of all the presidents from Calvin Coolidge to
John Kennedy.
The well-written and readable book opens with:
"Anne Sullivan, Keller insisted, transformed her from 'Phantom' to 'Helen.'
... She believed her teacher enabled her to become fully human by teaching
her language. It was the first major transformation in her life.
"College similarly transformed Keller from a child to an adult. Many
considered her disability to mean that she would be forever childish and
childlike, regardless of age. She was never able to dismantle everyone's
debilitating assumptions about her disability but graduating from Radcliffe
radically changed her own. Becoming an adult meant moving away from the
highly insulated life of a middle-class young girl made even more isolated
by fame, deaf-blindness, an Alabama farm and a Boston institution for
blind children. Becoming an adult meant ... wrestling with self-sufficiency
on all levels and embracing herself as fully human.
"It is frustrating that most of our cultural memories of Helen Keller
end before she even got this far."
Most of us tend to remember only that moment in 1887 when Sullivan pumped
water onto the 7-year-old's hands and the manual alphabet became her main
means of communication. Keller went on to live a full and active life,
including years of political activism until her death in 1968. This biography
reveals Keller's many years as a radical and an activist.
Keller cared deeply about a just world and fought unfairness and injustice
wherever she saw it, Nielsen said. She was especially interested in economic
justice. "Her entire life she was struck by the fact that we are the richest
country in the world and have such economic disparity. Her broad interests
were important to her, not just the disability issues."
In 1937 and 1938, she discovered she had huge international appeal and
found an international audience for her campaign for justice, Nielsen
said. When speaking before audiences, she might use finger-spelling and
have a companion speak for her.
But Keller had regained speech in her 20s and though she was difficult
to understand at first, people who knew her or listened to her for a bit
could understand her.
One of the most outstanding aspects of Keller, Nielsen said, is "how
much fun she had, particularly in the second half of her life. She developed
a rich circle of friends and activities she enjoyed. She had tremendous
fun.
That makes it all the sadder that we think of her as a 10-year-old.
Her life as an adult was so much more fulfilling.
"How we look at her is how we understand people with disabilities today
— either with awe or as children. Neither are real and do no one
any good," she said.
This book could change the way we look at Helen Keller.
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