Overview

A moving portrait of Anne Sullivan Macy, teacher of Helen Keller-and a complex, intelligent woman worthy of her own spotlight After many years, historian and Helen Keller expert Kim Nielsen realized that she and her peers had failed Anne Sullivan Macy. While Macy is remembered primarily as Helen Keller's teacher and a straightforward educational superhero, the real story of this brilliant, complex, and misunderstood woman has never been completely told. Beyond the Miracle Worker seeks to correct this oversight, presenting a new tale about the wounded but determined woman and her quest for a successful, meaningful life. Born in 1866 to poverty-stricken Irish immigrants, Macy suffered part of her childhood in the Massachusetts State Almshouse at Tewksbury. Seeking escape, in love with literature, and profoundly stubborn, she successfully fought to gain an education at the Perkins School for the Blind. She went on to teach Helen Keller, who became a loyal and lifelong friend. As Macy floundered with her own blindness, ill health, depression, and marital strife in her later years, she came to lean on her former student for emotional, physical, and economic support. Based on privately held primary source material-including materials at both the American Foundation for the Blind and the Perkins School for the Blind-Beyond the Miracle Worker is revelatory and absorbing, unraveling one of the best known and least understood friendships of the twentieth century.

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9780807050507

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A remarkable story of a vulnerable woman in a culture that allowed women neither freedom nor power. Still, somehow Anne, an almost blind orphan living in a poorhouse, managed to secure an education and carve out an independent life for herself and her student, Helen Keller. Anne Sullivan Macy is a feminist hero.--Mary Pipher, author of @lt;i@gt;Reviving Ophelia@lt;/i@gt; and @lt;i@gt;Seeking Peace@lt;/i@gt;@lt;br@gt;@lt;br@gt; A considerate yet equitable biography of a complex woman whose singular contributions to the burgeoning field of education for the blind have often been misjudged. --@lt;i@gt;Booklist@lt;/i@gt;@lt;br@gt;@lt;br@gt; Nielsen overcomes all the obstacles her recalcitrant subject throws in her path, and creates a portrait of Sullivan's life that is complex with all its contradictions and inconsistencies. --Georgina Kleege, @lt;i@gt;Disability Studies Quarterly@lt;/i@gt;@lt;br@gt;@lt;br@gt; Engaging and excellently researched . . . Nielsen shows how tragic Annie's 'secr

Author Information

Kim E. Nielsenis an award-winning educator, the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities We the People stipend, a Fulbright lecturer, the author of many journal articles, and frequent public speaker. Her books includeHelen Keller- Selected Writings(2005),The Radical Lives of Helen Keller(2004) andUn-American Womanhood- Antiradicalism, Antifeminism and the First Red Scare(2001). She also served as an advisory editor to the forthcomingEncyclopedia of American Disability History(2009). She lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin where she is Professor of History & Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

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