The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
I'm certain many people have learned about Helen Keller; perhaps even watched The Miracle Worker in a classroom. However, I am guessing that few people (including myself) read anything Helen had written. I first came across one of her essays "Three Days to See" in The American Idea anthology. Published in 1933, Helen writes about what she would do if she could recover her sight for just three days. The essay, brimming with detail and precise in language, is a reflection that made me stop for a moment to cherish the beauty around me. It also sparked a curiosity about Helen Keller that had been dormant since elementary school where we sat imagining Helen, a girl just like us from a time long before, feeling the cool rush on her fingers as Anne Sullivan spelled W-A-T-E-R into her hand. I then picked up The Story of My Life and could not put it down. Written when Helen was in her early twenties, the copy I read also included letters from Anne Sullivan describing, in a fascinating account, the story Helen told from her teachers perspective.
“For one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that binds us to earth, and joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine.”
Here is a great video of Helen learning to speak (one of many I watched while reading this book): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLqyKeMQfmY