[NFB-DB] Helen Keller's Shadow Essay

[heather Albright]

I agree, she is from another time with outdated attitudes on about everything. There was no ADA or even  ADIA. Women did not even have the right to vote during her time. The disabled were not even allowed to travel by themselves, hold jobs, or get married without family permission. Yes, some worked in the sheltered workshops making brooms and other items. My great uncle worked at such a workshop when he went blind and the accepted practice was to have him go back home to live with my great grandparents and he would only see his kids from their house. No one expected anything from him and my great grandma used to make all his meals and fix his drinks. They had no centers for him to go too. I am blessed by his life and He always had to fight to be seen and heard. And he was the life of the party from stories that were told. So I went to school and college because, my uncle never had the opportunity to do so in his world. 
Cheers Heather 
 
 

Sent from Mail for Windows

From: kg 6sxy (kg6sxy) via NFB-DB
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2021 4:03 PM
To: NFB DeafBlind Division
Cc: kg 6sxy (kg6sxy); marshadrenth at gmail.com
Subject: Re: [NFB-DB] Helen Keller's Shadow Essay

While I feel that Helen Keller can be an inspiration for some, it might not resonate as much with people today with different day to day struggles.  Yes, the world is a much different place and what often happens is people get lost in the noise of so many other problems in the world.  Hearing negative points of view like "if you're deafblind living in a small town with almost no foot traffic, there really aren't any viable options for getting out on your own."  That should be a challenge for everyone to think outside the box and find something else that might work.  Sure, there might not be a solution today but if no one continues to try to find better solutions, that's as good as writing them off and moving on to something easier.

What people need to hear are not only the success stories but stories from all people struggling, or no longer struggling, with similar issues.  It's great to hear that so many people have found a way to do what they want in life but if you can't relate to that person, you might not see how you can get to the same place.  Everyone needs role models they can relate to.  There's a lot of focus on children and students which is great but not so much focus on those that are facing these challenges later in life and aren't necessarily at a retirement age or they haven't got a strong family and friends support network yet.  These are the people I worry about.  Who is thinking about how to connect with people that might not have the courage or energy to find the connections on their own?

Yes, it is important to learn to self advocate but lets not forget that everyone started at a point of not knowing where to turn or who to talk to at some point and it is important to find ways to grab the attention of those people and point the way to a better life for them as well.

Take care,  
Tony



On Nov 15, 2021, at 4:10 PM, Marsha Drenth via NFB-DB <nfb-db at nfbnet.org> wrote:

I would love to hear the opinions and thoughts of others who are deaf blind on the article below.

Marsha drenth  
Sent with my IPhone  
Please note that this email communication has been sent using my iPhone. As such, I may have used dictation and had made attempts to mitigate errors. Please do not be hesitant to ask for clarification as necessary. 

Begin forwarded message:
From: John Lee Clark <jlc at johnleeclark.com>
Date: November 15, 2021 at 11:02:53 AM EST
To: psdbc at googlegroups.com
Subject: [psdbc] FW: [DBS] Helen Keller's Shadow Essay
Reply-To: psdbc at googlegroups.com

Forwarding.
Helen Keller’s Shadow: Why We Need to Stop Making Movies about Helen Keller

Cristina Hartmann

I had my first run-in with Helen Keller when I was 11. My mother had told me that I was losing my sight and would become DeafBlind someday. My response was nerdy to the extreme: I went to the library and borrowed the thickest and densest biography on Helen Keller. She was the only DeafBlind person I knew, and I figured that her life would tell me something—precisely what, I didn’t know.  

It took me over a month to finish the book. I read about her struggle to learn language, her ascent to fame, her advocacy for the disfranchised, and her international travels. Amid the impressive facts, I found little to which I could relate. I grew up speaking ASL and thought of the deaf community as my second family. Keller spoke as well as used fingerspelling and had little contact with the ASL deaf community. I came from a Brazilian immigrant family with few connections in this country. Luminaries like Alexander Graham Bell and Mark Twain sponsored Keller. I did well enough at school but was no prodigy. She was in a different league intellectually yet had little control over her life and faced persistent skepticism about her abilities. 

Instead of feeling inspired, I was terrified. Our society had reduced this brilliant and complicated woman into an inspirational parable and jokes. If America could trivialize someone like Keller, what would become of me? 

Almost 25 years after I read that biography, a friend texted about an upcoming Helen Keller movie called “Helen & Teacher.” It would focus on the tensions between Keller and her teacher/interpreter Anne Sullivan during their time at Radcliffe College of Harvard University. The director Wash Westmoreland proclaims that “Today, when some TikTok threads dispute Helen Keller’s achievements and even her existence, it is time for a film that shows her relevance, her brilliance and her unbreakable spirit.”

As I read the words in enlarged white-on-black text, I thought, “Relevant to whom? It’s sure not us.” The DeafBlind community is, and always has been, more than Helen Keller.  

After decades of hiding from Helen Keller’s legacy and my progressive vision loss, I tip-toed into the DeafBlind community and discovered a whole world beyond Helen Keller. If anyone deserves the Hollywood treatment, it is Geraldine “Jerrie” Lawhorn. After a long career of teaching and theater performances, Jerrie became the first Black DeafBlind college graduate at age 67. I also bumped into Marjorie McGuffin Wood in John Lee Clark’s poem “Line of Descent.” Clark writes: “She insisted she was no saint,” and I was immediately enamored. Since her tongue-in-cheek memoir Trudging Up Life’s Three-Sensed Highway has fallen out of print, I had to pester Clark for juicy tidbits about Wood, which he happily supplied. (Her maiden name was Dick, and she joked that she was ‘Baby Dick.’) I am still learning about my own community—a diverse one full of people from all backgrounds, cultures, communication styles, and opinions. There turns out to be many ways to be DeafBlind.

One such way comes from the emerging Protactile movement that is redefining what it means to be DeafBlind. As Clark, a DeafBlind poet and Protactile educator, describes in his essay, “Against Access,” Protactile establishes tactile-centric norms for language, interactions, and life. Protactile is our first truly tactile language, one born of touch—unlike the usual adaptations of visual or auditory languages into the tactile format. DeafBlind people are encouraged to feel their way through their environments and conversations, upending the status quo of being guided and interpreted for. 

I am still feeling my way around the new landscape and figuring out what being DeafBlind means to me. As I listen to others in Protactile—a finger drawing a line on my upper chest, a hand sliding up my arm—Helen Keller feels far away. She was flanked by intermediaries who managed her interactions with the world, a reality of her time. What it means to be DeafBlind is changing, and Helen Keller is becoming simply one historical figure among many. America has yet to catch up to this realization.

On October 15, 2021, controversy erupted about the casting for “Helen & Teacher.” Millicent Simmonds, a young Deaf actress who broke into Hollywood with Wonderstruck and A Quiet Place, would play Helen Keller. People, including many from the DeafBlind community, protested the casting as inauthentic and called for the role to go to a DeafBlind actress. They have a point: being a sighted deaf person is very different from being DeafBlind, and Simmonds comes from a position of privilege as a sighted actress. Simmonds and the studio can and should address these issues by working meaningfully with the DeafBlind community. If we focus on the casting, however, we are overlooking the real problem. 

“Helen & Teacher” seems to be part of an effort to modernize Helen Keller and make her more palatable to today’s audiences. Rejecting the traditional inspirational storyline, “Helen & Teacher” showcases Keller as a budding radical whose politics strained her relationship with the more conservative Sullivan. In Westmoreland’s words, the movie will “reintroduce one of the most famous teacher-student relationships in modern history.” Then PBS got in on the act with its recent documentary, “Becoming Helen Keller,” which examines her life and legacy through a contemporary lens.

A part of me loves that we are finally acknowledging Keller’s complexity and humanity. The other, and deeper, part of me senses the danger underneath the surface. If we focus on Keller and only on Keller, there is no room for other voices. Keller remains at the center of attention as Geraldine Lawhorn, Marjorie McGuffin Wood, and many others fade into obscurity. Only one example, one life, one perspective on deafness, blindness, and DeafBlindness occupies the public imagination. Little wonder Helen Keller conspiracy theories go viral: Keller is too singular, too exceptional to be believed. By fixating on Keller, the media is whitewashing and silencing the DeafBlind community. The hearing-sighted seem unable and perhaps unwilling to see or hear anyone else. 

In her New York Times essay, hearing blind author M. Leona Godin asks, “Why is it that America can’t seem to quit its infatuation with Keller?” It’s a good question. Is it laziness that prevents us from seeking out new voices, especially those from different backgrounds and perspectives? Or are we more comfortable with a familiar historical figure who doesn’t challenge us too much? Maybe we prefer success stories rather than those that push us to examine the systematic failures in our education, health care, and support systems for the disabled? 

It is time to give her a rest. Not because anything is wrong with her—she was a remarkable woman who touched many lives—but she has been in the public eye for over a century. She has yet to get a break from the scrutiny, even decades after her death. Let’s allow other stories to emerge. We can start with traditional biopics of Geraldine Lawhorn touching Carnegie Hall and Marjorie McGuffin Wood showing us how far she is from sainthood. That’s just a start. What we all need are extraordinary stories about ordinary DeafBlind people falling in love, picking fights, tangling with midlife crises, and having torrid affairs with traveling photojournalists. We are not so different, so neither should our stories be. With these stories, children like me can imagine a future outside of Helen Keller’s shadow. 

ABOUT

<image001.jpg>
A light-skinned woman of Brazilian heritage is standing outside and smiling at the camera. Her eyes twinkle at you, framed by dark and bold eyebrows. Her dark brown hair is pushed back by a pair of sunglasses, tendrils of hair fanning out around her face. Tactile Description: Cristina Hartmann has small, smooth hands that move deliberately and precisely, often punctuating her thoughts with a wry pinky wriggle-laugh. Her most distinctive tactile feature is her hair, soft and coconut-scented, which she keeps pulled back into a twist. She leans comfortably to the side as she chats with someone, always a bit askew.
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