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.
