Synopsis
View the Table of Contents . Read the Introduction . "Nielsen has compiled an outstanding collection, including many letters and photos that are being published for the first time. And even if you didn't grow up in Alabama, you may still marvel about how a little girl from Tuscumbia not only beat the odds but also blazed trails." —Dallas Morning News"Stunning final chapter." —The Yale Review"If you have not read Kim Nielsen'sThe Radical Lifes of Helen Keller, then I highly recommend it. As a person who has labored through numerous thick volumes on the life of this remarkable deaf-blind woman, I am delighted with Nielsen's concise and refreshing scholarly work. She examines Keller's life from a Disability Studies perspective. The book is enjoyable and easy to read, and it captures Keller's political dimension with great detail, based on such additional-and sometimes chilling-sources as military intelligence and FBI files. Nielsen does great justice to both the subject of her book and to Disability Studies as an emerging field." —Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education "This is an important book." —Altar Magazine"Nielsen's study challenges our impoverished cultural memories of Keller, which may have for too long served to "flatten" both our understanding not just of Keller's complex, contradictory life, but also the politics of disability, U.S. racialism, and women's political activities." —On Campus with Women"The Radical Lives of Helen Kellerthus is an important, essential guide for any who would receive a well-rounded survey of her life." —The Midwest Book Review"Radical Livesfills out an important dimension of our cultural memory of the adult Helen Keller." —www.msmagazine.com"Nielsen's account is thoroughly researched, well organized and extremely well written....a truly important and exciting work." —Ragged Edge Online"Nielson examines Helen Keller's radical politics and the various reasons her politcal views were so often neglected." —Library Journal"Based on expansive research in wide-ranging materials, including military intelligence and FBI files, Kim Nielsen unveils Helen Keller's political life. This finely written biography helps us understand the movement for disability rights in our own time." —Linda K. Kerber, author ofNo Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship"The book's compactness, straightforward writing style, and revolutionary approach makeThe Radical Lives of Helen Kellerinvaluable for both teachers and scholars. Keller would be delighted that Nielsen allowed her her Scotch." —Journal of American History"Nielsen's book gives us a Helen Keller for our times. We meet a complex person whose politics defy our reductionist knowledge about her, whose lived experience makes for compelling reading.The Radical Lives of Helen Kellerrenders three-dimensional, perhaps for the first time, a figure who all too often is known to the world, but known in minimalist flatness merely as a symbol of overcoming disability. Nielsen shows us that there is so much more to Keller—a political activist, theorist, and intellectual with unconventional, and, yes, even uncomfortable, opinions. She forthrightly explores these contradictions, in lucid, readable prose, to allow a very real version of Helen Keller to emerge from the darkness." —Lennard J. Davis, author ofBending Over Backwards: Essays on Disability and the BodySev