Vulgar History - April 14, 2023


Author Interview: Max Wallace (After the Miracle: The Political Crusades of Helen Keller)

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Author Interview: Paterson Joseph (The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho) Catherine de'Medici: Part One

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Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
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00:00:00.000 Hi, Tits Out Brigade. It's me, Anne. I wanted to let you know about a fundraiser that I'm
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00:00:29.560 month called Tits Out for trans rights. So you can get all the details if you go to vulgarhistory.com
00:00:34.940 slash donate. That's vulgarhistory.com slash donate. It's two-pronged, the fundraiser. So
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00:00:58.480 host, Maya Dean. And all the proceeds from sales of the Chevalier Day On merchandise this month
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00:01:18.620 there's a form also on my website where you can just list what the donation was and who you gave
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00:01:53.300 Hello, welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is
00:02:07.520 Anne Foster, and this is a special episode. I'm talking with author Max Wallace about a book that
00:02:14.040 when I first saw it listed, I was just like, what? When I saw the name of the title and the
00:02:19.500 subtitle, and then I looked into it and I was just like, oh, first of all, I need to read this
00:02:22.880 book. And second of all, I hope I can talk to this author on the podcast and both came true.
00:02:26.740 So he's written a biography of Helen Keller. It's called After the Miracle,
00:02:31.960 The Political Crusades of Helen Keller. And it is such a fascinating read. I thought I knew the
00:02:39.740 deal with Helen Keller. And we talk about this a bit in the interview that you're about to hear.
00:02:44.720 And so I just want to go over sort of the widely known, the widely known saga of Helen Keller,
00:02:49.460 which is that she was a little girl in Alabama. When she was 19 months old, she contracted an
00:02:56.900 illness that ended up making her deaf-blind. So she couldn't see, she couldn't hear. And then
00:03:02.780 sort of the narrative is that she was just this kind of feral child and nobody could get through
00:03:08.060 to her until a woman named Annie Sullivan came to teach her. And then the really big aha moment,
00:03:14.560 famously recounted in Helen Keller's own autobiography and then later in the play
00:03:19.620 and the movie The Miracle Worker. There's a moment when Helen Keller was six years old
00:03:23.780 and so Annie Sullivan had been spelling out letters in her hand and it just didn't seem
00:03:28.200 like Helen was really connecting the letters being spelled out with the objects that she
00:03:33.000 was being shown. There is a moment where Annie Sullivan held one of Helen Keller's hands
00:03:38.000 underwater from a water pump and spelled out water on Helen Keller's palm. And then this was
00:03:45.260 the moment where it just seemed like Helen Keller would like that, that clicked for her, like, oh,
00:03:50.680 this means this, this means this. And so a lot of the story of Helen Keller has been interpreted as
00:03:58.380 sort of like Annie Sullivan, like it's called the miracle worker. It's Annie Sullivan is the
00:04:01.940 miracle worker. Like it was a miracle that she taught Helen how to read and write and communicate
00:04:08.520 And as this book explains, Helen herself, I don't know, with a different teacher, similar or different things might have happened.
00:04:17.080 But the person that Helen Keller was, like, thank goodness that we're able to know what she was like, because it turns out, as much as she is still remembered today, is this kind of saintly advocate for the blind and for the deaf.
00:04:29.900 She was, in fact, a radical activist and advocate for her whole life.
00:04:36.220 And anyway, so Max Wallace is here with me to talk about the legacy of Helen Keller and how he's revisited it in this book.
00:04:45.460 So I hope you enjoy this chat between me and Max Wallace.
00:04:49.840 Okay, welcome, Max Wallace.
00:04:52.420 Oh, thanks for having me.
00:04:53.480 Thank you so much for coming on my podcast.
00:04:55.400 I'm really excited to talk to you about your new book, After the Miracle, The Political Crusades of Helen Keller.
00:05:02.300 So as a first question, can I ask you, before you were working on this book, what was your
00:05:07.580 understanding of Helen Keller?
00:05:09.200 Well, like most people, you know, I read the story of my life.
00:05:13.820 I think I was forced to read the story of my life in grade school.
00:05:16.720 And so, again, like most people, my image of Helen Keller was a six-year-old blind girl,
00:05:24.140 deaf-blind girl at the water pump in Alabama.
00:05:27.580 And that's all they ever told us about Helen Keller.
00:05:31.700 And then, you know, imagine my surprise years later, I'm a historian and I was doing a book about Nazi Germany, about the Third Reich, Charles Lindbergh's Nazi affiliations.
00:05:43.020 And I come across Helen Keller, you know, raising her voice against Hitler, against the rise of Nazism.
00:05:50.880 And then I did another Holocaust book a few years later, and I find that Hitler is burning her books and banning other books and censoring other books.
00:06:02.440 And so they never told us about that side of hell and cover, that's for sure. So I was very intrigued. 0.93
00:06:09.900 And was that where your decision to make this book came from, just sort of figuring out what on earth was she doing in this Holocaust story?
00:06:18.480 Oh, exactly. And then I started looking into her and I was, I was captivated by this incredible figure that, you know, no, very few people know this other side of her, her, you know, this all happened. Her legacy was forged when she was six years old, but she lived till 88. She lived till 1968. And nobody ever talks about her incredible adult life.
00:06:42.140 And, you know, the other part was kind of boring. You know, there's a term for it now, inspiration porn. Disability advocates call it this uplifting story that's designed to make non-disabled people feel uplifted and inspired. And that never really interested me.
00:07:01.800 My aunt was blind. So I did know that, you know, the obstacles that people with disabilities go through to some extent, right, just seeing the obstacles that my aunt faced. But I was never really inspired by that story of Helen Keller at the water pump. But when I discovered this side of her, I was very inspired.
00:07:24.780 Honestly, when I came across your book, just in a list of, you know, upcoming books, even just the title, The Political Crusades of Helen Keller, and I thought, the what now? Because I had the exact same understanding. She was kind of a deafblind girl who learned how to communicate. And I just never knew or thought to look into what did she do after that. And so it was incredible, all the everything you have in here.
00:07:47.720 So can you, you know, people should read the book to get the whole story, but some highlights of what she did after age six.
00:07:57.480 Well, she, you know, part of the original story that I guess people also knew was that she was the first deafblind person to graduate from university.
00:08:06.920 She goes to Radcliffe.
00:08:08.120 She graduates Summa Kamaladi.
00:08:11.420 And, you know, that was an impressive accomplishment for somebody with multiple disabilities.
00:08:18.440 Radcliffe didn't exactly go out of their way to accommodate her.
00:08:21.760 She had to fight every single step of the way.
00:08:23.780 But this is all part of the, a large part of the Helen Keller myth is the story of Annie Sullivan, her teacher.
00:08:31.380 and you know that i think probably more people now know the story from uh watching the miracle
00:08:38.620 worker the 1962 movie with ann bancroft and the miracle worker really casts uh annie sullivan
00:08:46.020 as the hero and helen keller becomes a secondary character in her own story so you know it's all
00:08:52.160 part of that uh the savior narrative right about the miraculous uh person who rescues the
00:08:57.940 a marginalized person. And we're supposed to celebrate this. And I guess people did for
00:09:03.400 decades. But, you know, once again, it completely sweeps Helen Keller's incredible life under the
00:09:10.960 rug. Well, and you mentioned in the book, just something I hadn't considered, but the movie
00:09:15.260 version of The Miracle Worker. So the actress playing Annie Sullivan was nominated for Best
00:09:20.180 Lead Actress. And then the actress playing Helen Keller was Supporting Actress, which really,
00:09:24.500 clearly, it was just seeing the way that he wrote it in the book, I'm like, oh, yeah, that movie is
00:09:29.500 about Annie Sullivan, heroic teacher. And Helen Keller is just kind of there.
00:09:34.540 And that movie ends when she's six years old in Alabama. And so, yeah, this is the 1880s. So
00:09:41.560 she's born in the postbellum South. Her grandparents were slave owners. They lived on
00:09:50.040 the plantation. And it turns out this has never been revealed, but her father, Arthur Keller,
00:09:55.680 was the first man in Alabama to take the obligations of the Klan in the 1860s. And so
00:10:05.020 this is the upbringing that she had. And later on in 1916, she sends shockwaves through the South
00:10:15.460 by issuing a, she gives a financial donation to the NAACP, the fledgling NAACP, which had just
00:10:22.940 been formed a couple of years earlier. And she sends a letter talking about how she's ashamed
00:10:28.500 in her soul to be from the South because of the tears of the oppressed. This incredible broadside
00:10:37.300 against Jim Crow and anti-Black racism. And needless to say, this was not well received
00:10:44.200 among white people in the south especially her family so there's you know intense pressure on
00:10:49.940 her to to take it back and backtrack and this is sort of a constant theme throughout her life
00:10:56.620 her employer Annie Sullivan her parents or she would she would you know take these very radical
00:11:04.040 positions all through her life and and then there will be intense pressure for her to you know
00:11:10.100 You're jeopardizing the welfare of the blind community.
00:11:14.160 You're jeopardizing your reputation.
00:11:16.740 There was a very concerted effort to cast her as a secular saint.
00:11:21.860 So even when they did talk about her adult life, it was always supposed to be as a shining symbol of overcoming adversity, resilience, etc.
00:11:34.960 So it comes as a shock to all Americans.
00:11:37.600 in 1912, she suddenly announces that she's joined the Socialist Party of America.
00:11:42.880 And not only that, but she's no garden variety moderate socialist who believes in achieving
00:11:49.340 socialism at the ballot box. She starts to talk about revolution. And the only way to transform
00:11:55.140 society is through a full scale revolution. And part of this, the epiphany, this is what I
00:12:02.240 discovered that, you know, the famous epiphany without Helen Keller is Annie Sullivan runs her
00:12:08.380 hand on water over her hand under the water pump in Alabama when she's six. But the real epiphany
00:12:16.120 that I discovered is when Helen Keller discovered that the majority of blindness and disability in
00:12:24.580 America is caused by workplace accidents resulting from a lack of worker safety. So this is an
00:12:31.260 epiphany for her and she starts to link disability with capitalism and she travels the country
00:12:37.980 talking about the commercial uh the greed of commercial society and you know people are
00:12:47.180 expecting to hear her talk about her inspirational story and she's indicting capitalism so needless
00:12:54.600 to say this is not well received by the media by the public the media starts to this ableist
00:13:02.260 narrative uh attaches to her where she must have been manipulated by those around her though the
00:13:08.380 wonderful blind girl certainly could never have come up with this uh on her own so annie sullivan
00:13:16.200 gets blamed and ironically annie sullivan was very conservative um you know helen keller is a staunch 1.00
00:13:23.820 feminist. She becomes a militant suffragette. And Annie Sullivan doesn't believe in socialism. 0.91
00:13:29.240 She doesn't believe in suffragism. She doesn't think the women are capable of exercising the 1.00
00:13:33.880 vote. While Helen Keller's telling the New York Times that she's a militant suffragette for one 1.00
00:13:41.740 reason, because suffragism will lead to socialism. Socialism is the ideal cause. But people just 0.82
00:13:48.300 can't accept that Helen Keller could have come to this, these radical ideas by herself.
00:13:57.320 She must have been manipulated by people around her. And this continues throughout her whole life,
00:14:03.460 this ableist narrative about how, well, no, Helen's a saint, so it must be the people around
00:14:10.240 her, the communists, the socialists, Annie Sullivan, are manipulating her. And very typical.
00:14:17.280 She's very outraged in the beginning. 0.96
00:14:19.200 She is very feisty, and her rhetoric is revolutionary,
00:14:26.680 and she's outraged by this, and she's very funny, too.
00:14:30.280 She has this incredible sense of humor.
00:14:32.720 She's befriended by Mark Twain.
00:14:34.580 Mark Twain loves her sense of humor.
00:14:36.140 A lot of people have discovered that her wit is very biting,
00:14:43.400 And she starts to use her sense of humor to counter this ableist narrative. So she writes these essays mocking the media for assuming that she's been manipulated by those around her. And she's always smarter than her critics.
00:15:02.280 So I think a lot of this went over their heads, but it's quite fascinating to watch these these rhetorical strategies that she uses to counter the ableist narrative that that's always greeting her political ideas.
00:15:16.540 And she she stops. So at one point, she becomes very conscious of her financial limitations.
00:15:27.440 She needs a job.
00:15:29.380 She goes on the lecture circuit, and she's making quite a lot of money. 0.57
00:15:33.400 She goes on the vaudeville circuit for a few years to pay the bills.
00:15:39.900 And eventually, she seeks stability.
00:15:43.020 So she gets offered a job by the American Foundation for the Blind, a full-time job,
00:15:47.180 which gives her a semblance of financial stability.
00:15:50.080 She's a fundraiser for the AFB, a large national organization working for the welfare of the
00:15:54.300 blind community.
00:15:54.940 But unfortunately, she realizes that she's going to have to tone down the rhetoric. She's seeking money. She's going hat in hand to these capitalists that she's been condemning a couple of years earlier. And so she stops that revolutionary rhetoric, but she does not stop believing in socialism.
00:16:15.120 She just sort of tones down her approach. And this is the part of the narrative that's attached to even her political side, is that after 1924, after she goes to work for the American Foundation for the Blind, she becomes apolitical.
00:16:35.120 political. Her politics have mellowed. Her nephew gives an interview years later saying that her
00:16:41.840 early socialist politics are a historical relic. So it's acknowledged. There's documentaries and
00:16:48.160 biographies that talk about her early socialist ideas. But this all supposedly came to an end in
00:16:54.980 1924. After that, she becomes mostly liberal in her outlook on society. But I discovered a very
00:17:02.980 different story. I probed FBI files, intelligence dossiers, private archives that actually revealed
00:17:11.280 she moved to the left after 1924. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia inspires her. And she
00:17:22.760 starts to take a very left wing, much further to the left than her old socialist analysis.
00:17:30.500 She starts to almost parrot the communist party line for a couple of decades.
00:17:39.200 And this is another side of her that's been swept under the rug.
00:17:43.020 Even those, you know, they acknowledge that she was once a socialist can't accept that she was actually a communist.
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00:21:03.480 And we're back. Well, and you say in your book, there's a part, one of the,
00:21:07.440 one of the many interesting things about your book is you sort of interrogate previous biographies
00:21:13.120 of her. And one of those called her socialism, a phase or something like that. And you're like
00:21:18.900 a phase that lasted 15 years. Like that's not. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, the most her most
00:21:26.080 celebrated biographer is Joseph Flash, who writes the first major biography of Helen Keller in 1980.
00:21:32.420 And he was a socialist before the war. So he's very sympathetic to her early socialist politics. But then starting in the 30s, it's very clear that she's moved to the left. She makes no secret of her admiration for the Bolshevik revolution.
00:21:49.600 She calls Vladimir Lenin the greatest living figure repeatedly during her vaudeville tour, and she spends the next three decades championing the Bolshevik revolution.
00:22:04.820 So it's very clear that she has a lot of admiration for communism.
00:22:08.860 She soured on Stalin early on. She realized that he's a tyrant. So she's quite critical of Stalin, but still retains this admiration for Bolshevism. And yet Joseph Lash in 1980, years later, he talks about how she was duped by the communists because she started to embrace the anti-fascist cause during the Spanish Civil War.
00:22:37.040 and travels with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade,
00:22:40.960 which had been formed by the Communist International.
00:22:45.820 And so she's a very strong opponent of fascism.
00:22:52.280 First, she's denouncing Hitler very early on,
00:22:57.220 before most people knew what was happening in Germany. 0.56
00:23:00.920 She's warning Hitler.
00:23:03.460 She sends a letter saying,
00:23:04.940 Do not think your barbarities towards the Jews are unknown here.
00:23:09.780 So she's an anti-fascist.
00:23:11.200 She's almost the epitome of Antifa, you know, long before that became a pejorative of the far right.
00:23:17.380 And then the Spanish Civil War happens, and she's very prophetic.
00:23:24.640 She speaks six languages, including German.
00:23:27.360 So she's reading periodicals in Germany.
00:23:29.500 She knows a lot more about what's happening in Europe than the average American because she's reading the news in all these various languages.
00:23:40.560 And she's warning Americans.
00:23:42.820 She's criticizing the New York Times for being too soft on Hitler.
00:23:47.420 So she spends the whole decade, you know, as a crusader against fascism.
00:23:52.960 And yet, according to her major biographer, she's been duped.
00:23:56.500 But again, you know, this ableist narrative that starts in the in the 1910s is still there in 1980.
00:24:07.340 uh so and probably probably today i'm sure there are a lot of people that that hear about you know
00:24:15.120 her political crusades and figure oh well she must have been she must have been manipulated by 0.74
00:24:20.020 by these people because the the wonderful helen keller could never embrace the an ideology that
00:24:27.620 goes against america and that's what's so fascinating to me like when i was reading
00:24:32.560 reading this book every page I was just like what like the the amount of um major civil rights
00:24:38.920 figures that she's interacting with like you you open the book with her her thoughts about the
00:24:43.360 arrest of Nelson Mandela like it's just she I picture her as this little girl in you know 1900s
00:24:49.920 early 1900s so it's she lived for most like up till 19 is it 68 she died in 1968 yeah like she
00:24:57.080 lived through so many major political moments in history, and she had a strong opinion about
00:25:03.700 all of them, and she wrote about it. Exactly. So it's out there, right? This isn't
00:25:09.420 a secret, and yet most people have no idea. And they certainly have no idea that she continued
00:25:15.280 these political states after 1924. So yeah, you mentioned Nelson Mandela. I came across in an
00:25:24.440 archive. And this has never been revealed that, um, that in 1950, 1956, uh, Nelson Mandela and
00:25:34.020 the entire, uh, African national Congress, uh, are arrested in a pre-dawn raid and put on trial
00:25:40.720 for treason. Uh, and they're facing the death penalty. This is a long time before anybody's
00:25:46.300 heard of Nelson Mandela before apartheid becomes a liberal cause celebre. And, uh, Helen Keller
00:25:53.860 had traveled to South Africa. She spent two and a half months in South Africa in 1951,
00:25:59.520 just three years after apartheid had been implemented. And she was appalled by what she
00:26:05.180 discovered. Now, she's from the South. She's from Alabama. And in Alabama, at that time, 1.00
00:26:14.940 the conditions facing African Americans were not that different than the condition facing
00:26:20.660 black South Africans. I interviewed two of Mohandas Gandhi's grandchildren who met her
00:26:28.000 during that tour. And one of his granddaughter, Ella Gandhi, ended up under house arrest years
00:26:37.080 later. She worked for the African National Congress. She was an MP and an ally of Mandela.
00:26:44.720 And I asked her, you know, why do you think Helen Keller was so shaken by apartheid?
00:26:52.760 It wasn't that much different than Alabama at that time.
00:26:56.180 She said she thought the major difference was that in Alabama, a large white minority was oppressing the black minority.
00:27:08.580 But in South Africa, it was a tiny white minority oppressing a massive black majority. That would have been the major difference between Alabama and South Africa in 1951.
00:27:21.120 So then a few years later, the dissidents start to organize against apartheid.
00:27:31.280 Nelson Mandela is arrested, put on trial for treason, and the civil rights activist writes to Helen Keller in 1959, asking her if she'll help raise money for the defense fund.
00:27:44.440 They're running out of money. Mandel and the others are facing the death penalty. And they thought that, you know, an appeal from a beloved figure like Helen Keller would might help the cause.
00:27:58.240 Now, this is the height of the Red Scare. Helen had spoken out against McCarthy, publicly spoke out against McCarthy and McCarthyism. And she, again, faced intense pressure from her employer to hold her this is jeopardizing your reputation, the cause of the blind community.
00:28:22.480 And yet when she gets this letter asking for her to issue an appeal for funds, she doesn't hesitate. She writes this very poignant letter about the poison. We have to stop the poison of racism and oppression. 0.99
00:28:43.160 So she issues this letter as well as a financial appeal.
00:28:47.760 And, you know, that's never been revealed.
00:28:49.820 It's just one more incredible story from her life that's been ignored or forgotten in favor of a more familiar narrative.
00:28:58.660 It's so fascinating to me.
00:29:00.040 It's so fascinating to me.
00:29:01.200 Like, everything in this book is, you were saying, like, some of these things were never revealed.
00:29:05.400 Like it was in the best interest of other people to just have her be this kind of heroic person who learned how to read.
00:29:13.060 And that was it.
00:29:14.620 Right.
00:29:15.040 But it's I love that all this stuff is coming out now.
00:29:18.340 But can you talk a bit, too, about some of the more problematic, some of the more problematic views?
00:29:23.960 I'm thinking specifically about eugenics.
00:29:25.780 Yeah. So in 1915, she very briefly now, this is a period where the socialists, so-called progressive figures have embraced eugenics, the idea of selective breeding or the there was this idea that eugenics would help curb the misery of overpopulation and poverty.
00:29:54.360 This was certainly Helen's rationale. Her very good friend and socialist comrade Margaret Sanger, who we now know as the founder of Planned Parenthood and a celebrated figure in feminist history, was a very ardent eugenicist.
00:30:13.180 And, and so that a baby is born in Chicago, the Bollinger baby with very severe birth defects. And Helen weighs in, she shocks a lot of her admirers by the, the, the doctor, the doctor that treated this baby decided that the baby was better off dying.
00:30:37.260 He was a staunch eugenicist himself, and this sort of furthered his agenda.
00:30:43.260 And Helen weighs in and says, you know, a baby with these severe defects is almost certain to become a criminal.
00:30:51.540 So she parrots this eugenic line, and it's a little bit shocking,
00:30:58.180 considering the compassion that she always showed for the most vulnerable members of society.
00:31:02.920 But this is very short-lived.
00:31:04.460 This is the only real example. And then, you know, two decades later, she reverses course. She uses her status as a disability icon to condemn Hitler's eugenic policies. So yet it certainly has cast a stain on her reputation among some segments of the disabled community.
00:31:31.140 Well, and I think it really, what I find really impressive about her is she was a woman who was consistently, like you were saying, she knew several different languages.
00:31:40.200 She was keeping up with news.
00:31:41.840 Like she's someone who I picture every day was just like, what's the latest theory?
00:31:45.640 What's the latest news?
00:31:46.360 What's happening in every country?
00:31:48.120 And so, and she had changed her views based on what she was reading and learning.
00:31:51.840 Like she was a lifelong learner.
00:31:53.980 Right.
00:31:54.120 And unfortunately, you know, she was reading these treatises by fellow socialists and by
00:32:01.160 so-called progressive figures who, for a couple of decades, genuinely believed that eugenics
00:32:07.300 was a progressive idea.
00:32:10.860 Obviously, the whole world was shocked by how eugenics was applied later by the Nazis.
00:32:17.600 But at that time, it was still this progressive concept that I think a lot of people don't
00:32:24.120 that it was the left that was embracing eugenics.
00:32:26.200 Now, one big difference between Helen and a lot of the other people,
00:32:32.380 including her mentor, Alexander Graham Bell, he was eugenicist.
00:32:37.220 But a lot of these eugenicists were also racists.
00:32:40.200 And they talked about sterilizing immigrants 0.81
00:32:43.380 and forced sterilization of racialized minorities. 0.98
00:32:49.180 Helen never took up that racial eugenics. 0.82
00:32:53.120 it was strictly about you know babies born with severe uh birth defects and that sort of thing 0.63
00:33:00.000 so i you know if there's a bright side to her eugenics to her short-lived uh embrace of eugenics
00:33:07.500 it was that she was never a racist annie sullivan was a racist you know i mean that was fairly
00:33:13.380 typical the time annie sullivan was a new englander um who considered herself very enlightened
00:33:18.840 and pro-Negro and anti-South,
00:33:21.700 and yet her writings are riddled with racism.
00:33:26.340 But Helen, you know, very early on,
00:33:29.640 seems to have made these connections.
00:33:32.140 Now intersectionality is this catchphrase in academia, right?
00:33:36.200 And Helen Keller was making these links 0.98
00:33:41.180 between race, gender, class, and ability most of her life,
00:33:45.120 Other than that, you know, tarnished phase of eugenics, she was an incredible thinker.
00:33:52.620 So, yes, she was reading this stuff, but she also had a very sharp mind.
00:33:56.700 I think that's a lot of people, you know, credit Annie Sullivan, because how else?
00:34:02.880 How did Helen Keller become such an accomplished figure?
00:34:06.540 It must be a credit to her teacher.
00:34:09.140 She was clearly a prodigy, you know, sort of a once in a lifetime mind.
00:34:14.700 Well, and I think I read, I forget if it was on the back of your book, or if it was one of the reviews, it said, Helen Keller, like she's known for learning how to speak. And then your book is talking about what she did with her voice. And I thought that was a beautiful way to explain kind of what your book is doing.
00:34:30.500 Right, right.
00:34:31.180 And honestly, it's so shocking to me. So now I think to learn all this stuff about Helen Keller that is not so widely known. And you see her on quotes, inspirational quotes, you know, the Helen Keller Barbie doll. And she's still very much seen as this kind of like saintly person who all she ever did was be deafblind.
00:34:51.680 And apart from her politics, which obviously my book focuses a lot on her political views, but I was really captivated by her as a person. She loved to drink, loved to beer. She loved dirty jokes.
00:35:06.940 you know mark twain she talked about how mark twain she was she was drawn to mark twain uh
00:35:13.920 because the profanity it came from his uh from his mouth right people talk about their friendship
00:35:20.280 but they never talk about that side of her you don't want to be thinking of you know ellen
00:35:25.240 ellen uh exchanging dirty jokes with mark twain and other people she was friends with
00:35:30.140 harpo marx and dorothy parker and a lot of people associated with with wit they they loved her sense
00:35:38.440 of humor and that you know she she um she went on vaudeville for a few years and and uh there was
00:35:45.580 always a question and answer session at the end of each performance and that was often the highlight
00:35:51.560 the audience would ask her a question so somebody would say what do you think of capitalism she said
00:35:57.280 it's outlived its usefulness. What did America get out of the First World War? The American
00:36:01.820 Legion and a bunch of other troubles. The audience roaring with laughter while making
00:36:07.740 these political blinks. So, you know, I love that side of her other than the politics.
00:36:13.700 Yeah. So it's really what I think is really great about your book is it's uncovering
00:36:17.800 the human being, like the person, what's her personality? What were her opinions? What were
00:36:22.560 her thoughts behind this oversized myth like i i thought i knew who helen keller was but i just
00:36:28.900 kind of knew the the mythology of a person who wasn't really a human right right yeah so i i'm
00:36:37.400 you know i'm hoping readers will will sort of leave with that that side of it there's a lot
00:36:41.940 of great progressive disability advocates today that have sort of taken up that mantle
00:36:46.180 Well, you know, she's sort of an anachronism amongst some segments of the disability community.
00:36:54.020 But I'd love people to be left with that image of this, you know, feisty woman who fought the good fight while enjoying a beer and a dirty joke instead of the six-year-old girl at the water pump.
00:37:08.840 No, exactly. 0.98
00:37:10.300 Do you have any...
00:37:12.020 Actually, that's a perfect response.
00:37:13.560 I was going to say, what do you hope people get out of the book?
00:37:15.220 what do you think the connection between actually here's my final question for you
00:37:19.060 if Helen Keller was around today what do you think she would be up to
00:37:22.280 oh I think she would have you know all through her life you know when there was a when there 0.99
00:37:27.900 was a conservative politician in power she loved nothing more than to take them on she uh you know 0.60
00:37:35.160 I could just picture her on the war path against Trump and and his ilk uh so you know a disability
00:37:44.140 advocates criticized her a few years ago and said that Helen Keller is not radical at all. 1.00
00:37:49.340 She's just another privileged white woman. History telling the story of a privileged white woman.
00:37:55.940 And Ted Cruz immediately tweeted his outrage at this. How dare you call the great Helen Keller 0.68
00:38:01.860 privileged? You know, if Helen were around to see herself defended by a politician that stands for
00:38:12.700 everything she opposed in her lifetime. I think one of her favorite epithets was a dung beetle. 0.99
00:38:18.180 She called this right wing columnist, the dung beetle, Westbrook Pegler in the 50s. 0.75
00:38:23.180 I'm sure I could just picture her calling Ted Cruz a dung beetle for defending her.
00:38:28.760 Well, I mean, that's just you mentioned in the book, too. And it's such a
00:38:31.920 beautiful illustration of the misunderstanding of her entire legacy and what she was about.
00:38:36.900 Right. Where somebody like Ted Cruz, you know, can can summon her image to serve his agenda. You know, it's a little bit troubling that, that, that, you know, people, if Ted Cruz only knew that he was defending a radical socialist.
00:38:53.900 socialist. Exactly. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really, I'm going to press on my
00:39:02.400 listeners. This is such an interesting and fascinating book. And just some of the sources
00:39:06.540 you're mentioning, it's like you're saying you're getting the FBI files and stuff. You really
00:39:11.500 are unearthing some fascinating information that's never been widely known about Helen
00:39:18.080 Kellen. I think that's so important. Thanks, Anne. Yeah, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
00:39:23.900 So again, this book is now available wherever you like to get your books from.
00:39:28.960 After the Miracle, The Political Crusades of Helen Keller by Max Wallace. And honestly,
00:39:33.740 like I think I said this in the interview, but reading this book was just blowing my mind. She's
00:39:37.700 almost like a Forrest Gump level person, like every prominent figure of the 20th century.
00:39:45.260 Somehow she either was friends with them if they were cool, or she wrote angry letters to them
00:39:50.060 if they were awful. She was just all up in everything. And it's wild to me that even while
00:39:55.140 she was alive and her legacy now just doesn't discounts either that this is what she was
00:40:00.440 actually like discounts that these are actually what she thought. It's such an interesting good
00:40:04.700 book. I super recommend it. And this is the Vulgar History Podcast. So to keep up with me and with
00:40:11.000 this podcast, I'm on Instagram at vulgarhistorypod and I'm also on TikTok at vulgarhistory. And
00:40:18.520 And, you know, I was just thinking, too, that this really ties in with some other conversations we've been having on this podcast about how when history is taught to people like those, the understanding, like, for instance, of Helen Keller, it's like, this is what she was like, and this is what her story was like.
00:40:34.740 so any new information that challenges the concept that she is this this little girl at
00:40:40.260 the water pump who then grows up to just be this kind of like saintly advocate it's like well no
00:40:45.020 here's letters and documents and proof that this is there was more to her than just that it's met
00:40:50.100 i think by with some resistance from people who can't who don't want to reinterpret what they
00:40:57.180 had been taught what they thought helen keller's whole story was so that's where it turns into as
00:41:01.280 Max was saying she was manipulated to think these things like it was just a phase like she couldn't
00:41:06.760 possibly have have been the person who she clearly was for 80 plus years of life anyway we're getting
00:41:15.440 to such interesting stuff lately on the podcast and this book ties in so tidily with it I was
00:41:20.260 really happy to be able to talk with Max anyway um yeah what was I saying vulgar history um we
00:41:25.960 also have a patreon if you want to listen to this podcast um ad free and early access to episodes
00:41:31.060 if you join my Patreon and for at least a dollar a month, you get the early ad free access. And for
00:41:36.200 $5 a month, you get the bonus episodes as well. My name is Anne Foster. This is Vulgar History
00:41:42.680 Podcast. We'll be back with another episode really soon. There's a lot of episodes coming
00:41:47.040 up this month and next month because between the stuff I'm doing and all these books that are being
00:41:51.080 published that I want to talk to the authors about, there's going to be like this week,
00:41:54.140 there's going to be several more weeks with two episodes per week. So enjoy. Anyway, until next
00:41:59.940 time, keep your pants on and your tits out. Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched 1.00
00:42:06.200 by Anne Foster and edited by Christina Lumagi.
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