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“Beyond the Miracle Worker” review

By TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER — June 16, 2009

“Beyond the Miracle Worker” by Kim E. Nielsen

c.2009, Beacon        $28.95 / $38.95 Canada    299 pages, includes index

Remember the last day of school before summer vacation?

Oh, for sure, your brain had checked out weeks before. There would be no learning, no writing, and very little sitting still. The long school year was over and a seemingly-unlimited summer stretched ahead.

Now imagine how your teacher felt.

By most accounts, being a teacher is the most frustrating, thrilling, teeth-gnashing, wonderful job anyone could have. So now, in celebration of a summer out of school, here’s a book about the woman who may be the world’s most famous Teacher: “Beyond the Miracle Worker” by Kim E. Nielsen.

Born into poverty to Irish immigrants in 1866, Anna Sullivan was ten years old when she landed in the Massachusetts States Almshouse, a horrible place she “spent her life… trying to forget.” Although Anna (later, Annie) hadn’t yet attended school, it was impressed upon her that education was the way to a good future. So when a state official visited the almshouse, the fourteen-year-old, never one for shyness, reportedly found him and demanded an education.

Because she suffered from an infliction that left her nearly blind, Annie was sent to the famed Perkins Institution. Six years later, the formerly-illiterate girl graduated as valedictorian but with no job prospects. When someone recommended that she become a teacher, she dismissed the idea immediately.

Near the end of the summer after graduation, the owner of Perkins forwarded a letter to Annie from a Mr. Keller in Alabama. Keller was looking for a governess for his “little deaf-mute and blind daughter.” Reluctantly, but with no better ideas for the future, Annie took the job.

Much has been written about the “little savage” Helen Keller was when Annie Sullivan arrived in Alabama, and Helen herself (as well as many biographers) took up the story after the famous “W-A-T-E-R” lesson.

Lesser-known is the story of the rest of Annie Sullivan’s life.

For a time when Helen was still young, Sullivan had a tumultuous love-hate relationship with her former Perkins headmaster, which resulted, in part, in a grave scandal involving possible fraud. As Helen grew up, Sullivan fretted over her own future, assuming that she would never fall in love or have a family (Sullivan did, eventually marry). And although she fought fiercely for rights on behalf of Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan wasn’t always just Keller’s Teacher.

Exhaustively researched and not always complimentary, “Beyond the Miracle Worker” goes way beyond all the stuff you read in school about the complicated, headstrong woman who gave Helen Keller words.

Using documents and diaries, author Kim E. Nielsen offers the sometimes heartbreaking, often frustrating life and work of Anne Sullivan Macy. While the narrative can occasionally become tedious, Nielsen gives readers a definite sense of the times and social mores under which Anne Sullivan lived, as well as some juicy tidbits about a woman that history often glosses past.

If a biography is on your reading to-do list this summer, “Beyond the Miracle Worker” is a worthy one for you. Grab this book and learn a thing or two.

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