Like Usher, Valentino (whose real surname is Wilson) presents himself as a sex symbol. It seems like the young R&B singers - although, you could say this for the genre as a whole - either want to be irrepressible lovermen or thuggish gentlemen. Discounting Usher, there hasn't been someone who makes you want to listen to him. Yet as Macy floundered with her own blindness, ill health, and depression, as well as a tumultuous and triangulated marriage, she came to lean on her former student, emotionally, physically, and economically.īased 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. Seeking escape, in love with literature, and profoundly stubborn, she successfully fought to gain an education at the Perkins School for the Blind.Īs an adult, Macy taught Keller, helping the girl realize her immense potential, and Macy's intimate friendship with Keller remained powerful throughout their lives. It presents a new and fascinating tale about a wounded but determined woman and her quest for a successful, meaningful life.īorn in 1866 to poverty-stricken Irish immigrants, the parentless and deserted Macy suffered part of her childhood in the Massachusetts State Almshouse at Tewksbury. By telling the life from Macy's perspective-not Keller's-the biography is the first to put Macy squarely at the center of the story. "Beyond the Miracle Worker," the first biography of Macy in nearly fifty years, complicates the typical Helen-Annie "feel good" narrative in surprising ways. While Macy is remembered primarily as Helen Keller's teacher and mythologized as a straightforward educational superhero, the real story of this brilliant, complex, and misunderstood woman, who described herself as a "badly constructed human being," has never been completely told. She lives in Green Bay, WI.Īfter many years, historian and Helen Keller expert Kim Nielsen realized that she, along with other historians and biographers, had failed Anne Sullivan Macy. Nielsen is Associate Professor of History and Women s Studies in the Department of Social Change and Development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Nielsen's biography, the first to focus on Macy in nearly fifty years, tells Macy's life as "her "story-not Keller's-presenting a new, gripping tale about a wounded yet determined woman and her quest for a successful and meaningful life. Biographers had shortchanged Anne Sullivan Macy, a woman remembered primarily as a miracle worker.