Beyond the Miracle Worker The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller

Historians and biographers have short changed Anne Sullivan Macy-the woman known only as the teacher of Helen Keller. Our cultural memories mythologize and simplify her as a straight-forward educational superhero, but Macy described herself a "badly constructed human being". This first biography of Macy in over forty years presents Anne Sullivan Macy in all of her complexity. First and foremost, by telling and analyzing Macy's life as her story-not Helen's-Beyond The Miracle Worker tells a new tale. This biography follows the accidental and unexpected path an orphaned asylum child took to become a world famous educator. This includes an intimate depiction of growing up amidst the horrors of a mid-nineteenth century asylum, a rare if ever told story in U.S. history. It chronicles a tumultuous marriage. It analyzes the long adult life of a chronically ill, disabled woman whose public identity excluded nearly all acknowledgement of her disability. It follows a smart and ambitious woman trying to make a professional life in a patriarchal society. And it traces the ever-changing friendship between Macy and Keller, in which the deaf-blind Keller eventually cared for and became the personal aid of her former teacher.

The author of three books, including two on Helen Keller, Kim E. Nielsen is a professor of history and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She lives in Green Bay.

Chapter 1
Feeding Hills
 
Chapter 2
Tewksbury Almshouse
 
Chapter 3
Perkins, 1880-1885: Part One
 
Chapter 4
Perkins, 1880-1886: Part Two
 
Chapter 5
Becoming a Teacher
 
Chapter 6
Tuscumbia, 1888-1891
 
Chapter 7
The Battle for Helen, Round 1, 1891-1984
 
Chapter 8
The Battle for Helen, Round 2, 1894-1900
 
Chapter 9
Radcliffe, 1900-1904
 
Chapter 10
John, 1904-1914
 
Chapter 11
On the Road, 1914-1924
 
Chapter 12
The American Foundation for the Blind, 1924-1930
 
Chapter 13
Concluding, 1930-1936
 
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index