2:19am October 11, 2013

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

Helen Keller

This is a friendly reminder that, although most of society pretends that Helen Keller was perpetually an “inspiring” deaf and blind 8 year old with an awesome teacher, it’s important to remember that she isn’t just some “feel good” story to inspire grade school children.

Yes, she became deaf and blind as a child. She learned to read, and sign, and write. She went to college, took multiple foreign languages, got a degree.

She became a radical socialist, women’s rights activist, birth-control supporter, suffragette, labor rights activist who wrote her own auto-biography as well as many other books and papers about her political causes. 

Helen Keller was a bad ass. 

(via fandomsandfeminism)

In other words, no, Helen Keller’s life did not freeze at the moment that she first learned how to finger spell the word “water” while standing at the water pump with Anne Sullivan with the water running over her hands.  Her universe was not confined to that one place, to that one perpetual moment of “miracle”.  She had a whole life, decades and decades, after that moment.  If you stop at the water pump then you haven’t really learned anything about Helen Keller at all.

(via andreashettle)

Se also drank like a fish, swore like a sailor in private, and smoked cigars.  Apparently she used to hang out with Mark Twain while doing these things If my memory recalls.

5,277 notes