After the Miracle

I grew up watching The Miracle Worker on television. Anne Bancroft plays Annie Sullivan to Patty Duke’s Helen, blind and deaf since babyhood, an uncontrolled child who needs taming and civilizing. One day, Helen understands that Annie’s finger language is a communication. An excited Helen eagerly wants to understand the words for everything. Sullivan has worked a miracle. It is an affecting story. But it is also a story with all that implies.

I realized that I knew very little else about Keller–except that she had an Akita named Kamikaze, a gift received while in Japan. I didn’t know anything about her “political crusades.”

After the Miracle will disrupt many misconceptions about Keller.

She read five languages. She attended Radcliffe and received a B.A.–the first blind-deaf person to attend college. Raised in the segregated South, she spoke against racism in America and Apartheid in South Africa. Her sympathies were socialist, strongly anti-fascist. She championed the rights of the poor, the working class, women, and the blind and deaf. Helen was anti-capitalist, but accepted an annuity from Andrew Carnegie. Helen had wanted to marry, but her family sent the man packing; some who knew them thought she had a sexual relationship with Annie. She rejected her family’s Presbyterianism after reading Swendenborg, attracted to the social justice aspect of Jesus’ teachings.

The biography begins with Helen’s early life and development. It traces her political development as she responsed to the changing political scene, including the rise of Hitler, the Russian revolution, Joe McCarthy, and the American presidents.

Annie Sullivan had vision problems all her life. Helen called her Teacher, and gave her credit for all of her success. After Sullivan’s health failed, other caretakers stepped in. Helen was dependent on them to relate conversations through finger language, although Helen could also read lips with her hands.

The most complete biography of Helen is analyzed for bias, downplaying her political alliances. During Helen’s life and after her death, her radical view were dampened. Her work for the American Foundation for the Blind and other groups required an idealized Helen, not a radical socialist.

After the Miracle reveals Helen’s life-long fight for social justice. And it is interesting to see how iconic personages have their public image and heritage shaped by the desires and needs of those who capitalize on them.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

After The Miracle will likely end up being among my favorite books of the year. Well-researched and insightful, the book is a joy to read. The author gives great context to Helen Keller's life and her place in the larger role of disability advocacy.

Like many people, I grew up with the "nice" and fairly infantalizing story of Helen Keller. After the Miracle is not that story. This book is focused on her as a full person: political, fierce, witty, intelligent, and deeply compassionate. Helen was an advocate for people from a wide variety of marginalized groups, most often Black Americans, oppressed workers and those living in poverty, and people with disabilities within these categories. What I didn't expect from this book were the controversies that surrounded her, including her ties to Communism and her horrifying stance on eugenics and repeated ableist language and opinions.

After the Miracle is a well-rounded biography that is both informative and riveting. If, like me, you only know the popular narrative around Helen Keller's life, I highly recommend seeking this out. I am so grateful to have read this and learned so much about the deep influence she had and the radical politics that shaped her life.