Young People's Socialist League

Many people have heard of Helen Keller, the first deafblind person to graduate from college, an author, and the individual honored on Alabama's state quarter. Many fewer actually know what sort of person Keller was, what she stood for and believed in. Keller's activism on behalf of women's suffrage, pacifism, civil liberties, and radical socialism have largely been stripped from the sanitized images of her in popular consciousness. This short collection of some of Keller's best-known radical writings can help address this ignorance and raise consciousness about an American radical and militant socialist most often remembered as little more than a "poor little blind girl".

In "Helen Keller: Rebel Lives", editor John Davis brings together a collection of letters, articles, and essays (all written by Keller except for one interview) outlining her radical social visions. Davis opens the volume with a 14-page biographical sketch, chronology, and introductions to the documents written with Karen Fletcher. The remaining 75 pages are organized into four sections, each including 5-7 brief documents, that explore Keller's views on disability and class (and the links between them); socialism and industrial unionism; women and women's suffrage; and war, militarism, and pacifism. Also included is a very short bibliography of electronic and printed resources for more information.

The documents I found most interesting were those relating to Keller's involvement with the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a radical anticapitalist union. Even though I was already familiar with Keller's revolutionary socialism, Keller's lively and witty articles on socialism and the IWW were a pleasure to read even with the burden of hindsight. I can only imagine that readers who know little about Keller the radical leftist will find these writings much more of a revelation, and more interesting as a result.

This volume is in no sense a complete biography of Keller. It includes only introductions to her activism and revolutionary politics, and could have benefited greatly from providing background and analysis that was both more comprehensive and more in-depth. However, this slim volume is plenty to burst the bubble of sanitized history that surrounds popular views of Keller, and help readers get past her whitewashed image and learn a bit about the least-remembered aspects of the real person. It may also be of special value to teachers looking for primary sources on Keller or any of her fields of activism.