What We Talk about When We Talk about Helen Keller: Disabilities in Children’s Biographies

This essay considers the role children’s literature plays in what Lennard J. Davis has called “the hegemony of normalcy” by closely studying a sample of biographies of Helen Keller intended for children. Through the lens of disability studies, I examine how Keller’s life has been re-appropriated to portray her as a victim of her disability rather than of a society that privileges the “able-bodied.” Such analysis also revisits the debates over biographies for children, an area of children’s literary study often neglected because of accusations of bowdlerization and oversimplification of the subject’s life as well as a perceived lack of artistry.