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Overview
Dorothy Herrmann's powerful biography of Helen Keller tells the whole story of the controversial and turbulent relationship between Helen and her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Herrmann also chronicles Helen's doomed love affair, her struggles to earn a living, her triumphs at Radcliffe College, and her work as an advocate for the disabled. Helen Keller has been venerated as a saint or damned as a fraud, but Herrmann shows her to have been a beautiful, intelligent, high-strung, and passionate woman whose life was transformed not only by her disabilities but also by the remarkable people on whose help and friendship she relied."Fascinating. . . . Stripping away decades of well-meaning sentimentality, Herrmann presents a pair of strong-willed women, who struggled to build their own lives while never forgetting their dependence on each other."—Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor
"We meet an entirely unexpected Helen Keller—a woman with deep if concealed ambivalence toward her self-sacrificing teacher; a political radical; and a woman longing for romantic love and the fulfilled sexual life of a woman."—Joan Mellen, Philadelphia Inquirer
"Herrmann's portrait of Keller is both fully embodied and unflinchingly candid."—Mary Loeffelholz, Boston Sunday Globe
"This well-proportioned biography of the deaf and blind girl who became a great American crusader rescues its subject from the shackles of sainthood without destroying her as an American hero."—Dennis Drabelle, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Herrmann's engrossing biography helps us see beyond the public's fascination with how Keller dealt with her disabilities to discover the woman Keller strived to be."—Nancy Seidman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Perhaps the most intimate biography [of Helen Keller]. [Herrmann] gives her back her sexuality [and] imbues her with a true humanity. . . . Helen Keller: A Life has some of the texture and the dramatic arc of a good novel."—Dinitia Smith, New York Times
Synopsis
Dorothy Herrmann's powerful biography of Helen Keller tells the whole story of the controversial and turbulent relationship between Helen and her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Herrmann also chronicles Helen's doomed love affair, her struggles to earn a living, her triumphs at Radcliffe College, and her work as an advocate for the disabled. Helen Keller has been venerated as a saint or damned as a fraud, but Herrmann shows her to have been a beautiful, intelligent, high-strung, and passionate woman whose life was transformed not only by her disabilities but also by the remarkable people on whose help and friendship she relied.
"Fascinating. . . . Stripping away decades of well-meaning sentimentality, Herrmann presents a pair of strong-willed women, who struggled to build their own lives while never forgetting their dependence on each other."—Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor
"We meet an entirely unexpected Helen Keller—a woman with deep if concealed ambivalence toward her self-sacrificing teacher; a political radical; and a woman longing for romantic love and the fulfilled sexual life of a woman."—Joan Mellen, Philadelphia Inquirer
"Herrmann's portrait of Keller is both fully embodied and unflinchingly candid."—Mary Loeffelholz, Boston Sunday Globe
"This well-proportioned biography of the deaf and blind girl who became a great American crusader rescues its subject from the shackles of sainthood without destroying her as an American hero."—Dennis Drabelle, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Herrmann's engrossing biography helps us see beyond the public's fascination with how Keller dealt with herdisabilities to discover the woman Keller strived to be."—Nancy Seidman, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Perhaps the most intimate biography [of Helen Keller]. [Herrmann] gives her back her sexuality [and] imbues her with a true humanity. . . . Helen Keller: A Life has some of the texture and the dramatic arc of a good novel."—Dinitia Smith, New York Times
Newsday - Stephanie Zacharek
Herrmann is a master at weaving crucial details of this varied and energetic life into a seamless story.
Editorials
Thomas Fields-Meyer
Using previously unreleased memoirs, veteran biographer Herrmann...paints an intimate and moving portrait of one of the century's most inspiring figures.— People
Mary Loeffelholz
Herrmann's portrait of Keller is both fully embodied and unflinchingly candid.— Boston Sunday Globe
Dinitia Smith
. . .[P]erhaps the most intimate [Helen Keller] biography. . .offers few new facts about Keller, but it does give her back her sexuality. . . .Keller lived through her fingers, and there were moments when her relationship with 'Teacher' seemed to have an almsot sexual intensity. . . .[the book] has some of the texture and the dramatic arc of a good novel.— The New York Times
Stephanie Zacharek
Herrmann is a master at weaving crucial details of this varied and energetic life into a seamless story.— Newsday
Library Journal
Biographer Herrmann takes us beyond the image of Helen Keller portrayed in 'The Miracle Worker' to unearth a passionate, politically radical woman whose inspiration and teacher, Annie Sullivan, is equally fiery and brilliant. Herrmann brings us into the everyday lives of the famous pair, but the story is hardly mundane. The quasi-sexual undertones of Keller and Sullivan's relationship are present, but psychological motives are always offered. Sullivan forsook the attention of men while consciously or unconsciously turning Keller from a 'monster' into a 'grateful, helpless child' and then the 'utterly dependent woman [who] would never desire to be free of her.' Herrmann gives us fascinating details via archives and unpublished memoirs to show how society's view of disabled people was greatly shaped by Keller and Sullivan. . .Herrmann's work can stand alongside Keller's famous autobiography The Story of My Life. --Kay Meredith Dusheck, Univeersity of IowaDinitia Smith
. . .[P]erhaps the most intimate [Helen Keller] biography. . .offers few new facts about Keller, but it does give her back her sexuality. . . .Keller lived through her fingers, and there were moments when her relationship with 'Teacher' seemed to have an almsot sexual intensity. . . .[the book] has some of the texture and the dramatic arc of a good novel.— New York Times
Kirkus Reviews
This biography ably chronicles the long, remarkable life of the deaf/blind prodigy, mystic, and socialist Keller and her longtime teacher and helpmate, Anne Sullivan, who taught her to communicate with the world. Keller, born in 1880 in rural Alabama, developed at age 19 months a grave case of what Herrmann says was probably scarlet fever or meningitis. She recovered but lost total hearing and sight, becoming increasingly frustrated and unruly in the ensuing years. Herrmann recounts the thrilling story of Sullivan's 'breaking through' to the wild child (a tale familiar to viewers of the 1962 film 'The Miracle Worker'). 'By the end of their first year together,' writes Herrmann, 'Annie was spelling into Helen's hand stories from 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey'.'Herrmann charts how various powerful men, including Alexander Graham Bell, facilitated, perhaps out of mixed motives, the creation of Helen's public persona, both before and after the celebrated young Keller's entrance to Radcliffe College. Later, with publication of her autobiography (the first of many books), Keller achieved lasting international fame. A theatrical agent, around the time of the 1918 film about Keller, 'Deliverance (in which Helen played herself in some of the scenes), observed that 'after Helen's release from silence and darkness, nothing dramatic happened to her.' This, of course, will be part of the problem with any biography of Keller. Her post-collegiate years included a never-ending round of lecture tours, and even a stint with Sullivan as a vaudeville regular from 1920 to 1924, activities supported by her popularity but also necessitated by economics.
For that and other reasons, the widely reveredKeller, who lived to age 88, comes off as something of a sad if stoic figure. A fairly lively slice of American social history, but lacking in its later pages much inherent excitement.