This inspiring autobiography by Helen Keller is an account of her life from her family history up to her last years of college, supplemented by her personal letters from age seven to twenty-one. This edition includes letters and reports contributed by her teacher, Anne Sullivan, and the editor, John Albert Macy.
Not only does her story demonstrate the challenges of becoming educated after losing her sight and hearing as a small child, but also a peek into the history of the world for a Deafblind person in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It depicts a young woman with an irrepressible determination to prove that she has the capacity to live a meaningful life beyond society's vision of her boundaries. Her wisdom and keen observations defy her age. Through her words, we see how much and how little life has changed since 1900; all of it from the perspective of one whose physical restraints most of us cannot truly comprehend.
The supplemental information provides the additional context of the hurdles Helen Keller overcame to reach her accomplishments in life.
Helen Keller (1880–1968), born at Tuscumbia, Alabama, became deaf and blind at nineteen months. Her real life began when she was almost seven years old, on the day when Annie Sullivan, a twenty year-old graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind, came to be her teacher. They were inseparable until Annie’s death in 1936. Helen went on to graduate cum laude from Radcliffe College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1904, becoming the first deaf and blind person to graduate from college. She attained high distinction as a lecturer, writer, scholar, and prominent worker for social reform. Her books include The Story of My Life (1902), The World I Live In (1908), Out of the Dark (1913), My Religion (1927), Midstream: My Later Life (1929), and Let Us Have Faith (1940). Ms. Keller received the Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as many honorary degrees. Her burial urn is in the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.
Amy J. Johnson is originally from Nebraska, but now lives in Chicago. She received her MFA in acting from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and started her professional career performing one-woman historical touring programs for schools in and around Chicago. Since living in Chicago, she has worked in theater, film, television, voice-over, and audiobook narration.