Helen Keller and "The Empire of the Normal"

Abstract

IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE TO TALK ABOUT DISABILITY MEMOIR IN AMERICA without mentioning Helen Keller. Certainly her first book, The Story of My Life (1903), is the disability autobiography that leaps most readily to mind. Moreover, most of Keller's writing centered on her own life, and during her long career she attempted every genre of life-writing: linear narratives, personal essays, a treatise on her religious belief, and a published journal recording her daily life during a five-month period. But it is her first book that set the standard; The Story of My Life has the quintessential triumph over adversity plot. It chronicles her first twenty-two years, from birth through her first year at Radcliffe College. With the self-effacing modesty characteristic of the genre, Keller is at pains to show that her accomplishments were made possible chiefly through the effort and self-sacrifice of her teacher and companion, Anne Sullivan. She represents Sullivan as her savior who first liberated her from darkness and silence through the gift of language and then championed her cause against individuals and institutions that stood in the way of her educational goals. Perhaps recognizing that deaf-blindness is a condition few seeinghearing readers can imagine or identify with, Keller shifts the focus of her autobiography to make Sullivan its protagonist. Combined with the book's upbeat tone and inspirational message, this helped The Story of My Life enjoy almost universal critical acclaim and popular success. One anonymous review in The New York Nation, however, expressed doubts about the book's authenticity: