After the Miracle: The Political Crusades of Helen Keller

Name: After the Miracle: The Political Crusades of Helen Keller
Price: 16.58 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Max Wallace
ISBN: 9781538707685

She sent shock waves through the South when she launched a public broadside against Jim Crow and donated to the NAACP. She used her fame to oppose American intervention in WWI. She spoke out against Hitler in 1933 and embraced the anti-fascist cause during the Spanish Civil War. She was one of the first public figures to speak out against Apartheid, raising money to defend Nelson Mandela when he faced the death penalty, and she lambasted Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Cold War. But who was this revolutionary figure? She was Helen Keller.

From books to movies to Barbie dolls, most mainstream portrayals of Keller focus heavily on her struggles as a deafblind child — portraying her Teacher, Annie Sullivan, as a miracle worker. This narrative, which has often made Keller a secondary character in her own story, has resulted in few people knowing that her greatest accomplishment was what she did with her voice when she found it. In this first major biography of Keller in decades, Max Wallace calls attention to Keller’s efforts as a card-carrying socialist, fierce anti-racist, and progressive disability advocate. Keller consistently challenged the media for its ableist coverage and was one of the first activists to highlight the links between disability and capitalism. Peeling back the curtain that obscured Keller’s political crusades in favor of her “inspirational” childhood, After the Miracle chronicles the complete legacy of one of the 20th century’s most extraordinary figures.