Helen Keller

Helen Keller was an American novelist and educator who was blind and deaf. She was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, and passed away in Westport, Connecticut, on June 1, 1968.

hellen keller

Her training and education constitute a remarkable achievement in the field of education for people with these kinds of limitations.

At the age of 19 months, Keller developed blindness and deafness due to an illness that may have been scarlet fever. When she was six years old, Alexander Graham Bell examined her. Thus, he dispatched to her a twenty-year-old instructor named Anne Sullivan (Macy) from the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, which was overseen by Bell's son-in-law. Keller was taught by the exceptional Sullivan from March 1887 until her own passing in October 1936.

Keller learned to read sentences by feeling elevated words on cardboard, to feel objects and correlate them with words spelled out by finger signals on her palm, and to construct her own phrases by arranging words in a frame in a matter of months. She studied Braille during the winters of 1888–1890 at the Perkins Institution. Then, under Sarah Fuller of the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston, she started a gradual process of learning to talk. She also learned how to lip-read by simultaneously having the words spelled out for her and placing her fingers on the speaker's lips and throat.

After acquiring abilities never attempted by another person with a similar disability, Keller started writing about blindness, a topic taboo in women's periodicals at the time due to the connection between many cases and venereal disease. Her writings were accepted by Edward W. Bok for the Ladies' Home Journal, and then she was published in The Century, McClure's, and The Atlantic Monthly, among other prestigious journals.

She wrote several books about her life, including “The Story of My Life” (1903), “Optimism,” “The World I Live In” (1908), “Light in My Darkness and My Religion” (1927), “Helen Keller, Journal” (1938), “The Open Door” (1957), and “The Other Side of the World” (1913). She lectured (with the help of an interpreter) in 1913, mainly on behalf of the “American Foundation for the Blind” (for which she later established an endowment fund of $2 million), and went on lecture tours around the world. In 1920, she co-founded the “American Civil Liberties Union” with American civil rights leader Roger Nash Baldwin. Her work to improve the conditions of the deaf and blind was influential in getting the disabled out of asylums. By 1937, commissions for the blind had been established in 30 states.

The play "The Miracle Worker" by William Gibson (1959) was based on Keller's childhood lessons with Sullivan. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1960 and was later adapted into a 1962 film directed by Anne Bishop, starring Sullivan as well as Patty Duke as Keller. The film won two Academy Awards. 

Christy Brown

Christy Brown was an Irish writer who overcame nearly complete paralysis to become a well-known novelist and poet. She was born in Dublin, Irish Free State (now in Ireland), on June 5, 1932, and

kristy brown , source : google photos

passed away in Parbrook, Somerset, England, on September 7, 1981.

With the exception of his left foot, Brown was born without the ability to control any of his limbs due to cerebral palsy. His mother, who had twelve other children and would not have him placed in an institution, taught him to read and eventually to write with his one working limb. His best-selling autobiography, My Left Foot, was published in 1954, and Down All the Days, his best-selling book, was released in 1970. His speech and muscular control improved because of the loving care he received from his mother and his wife, Mary, whom he married in 1972, as well as his own perseverance. In 1974, he released A Shadow on Summer and two years later, Wild Grow the Lilies. A Promising Career, his final book, was published posthumously in 1982. My Left Foot was made into a movie, which debuted in 1989 and won two Academy Awards in 1990.

Brown writes about his life in a straightforward and poetic style, and he has a gift for storytelling. It hurts so much when he talks about his experiences with isolation, captivity, and suffocation at times. However, he finds that by using his left foot to write and paint, he can release his suppressed emotions and have transcendent experiences. The candlelight procession at Lourdes, which Brown refers to as "the most beautiful moment of my life," is one of the most poignant scenes ".

In My Left Foot, Brown pays tribute to the mentors and friends who have supported him along the way, including his mother, who has fiercely opposed putting him in an institution since he was born, social worker Katriona Delahunt, physician and author Robert Collis, and teacher Mr. Dot Guthrie.

Without getting too sentimental, My Left Foot encourages us to see severely disabled people as whole human beings and to sympathise with them. In 1989, Jim Sheridan turned the text into a movie starring Daniel Day Lewis and Brenda Fricker, who took home Oscars for their roles.

 

Anne Sullivan

Anne Sullivan, an American teacher, was born on April 14, 1866, in Feeding Hills, near Springfield.

anne sullivan 

Massachusetts, U.S. She passed away on October 20, 1936, in Forest Hills, New York. Sullivan is best known for her remarkable accomplishment in educating Helen Keller, who had no vision, hearing, or speech abilities, to a high level of education.

Joanna Sullivan, also known as Anne or Annie, lost her mother when she was eight years old, and her father abandoned the three of them two years later. In 1880, Sullivan, who had been almost blind from an earlier illness, enrolled in the Perkins Institution for the Blind. She had some sight restored by surgery the following year, and in 1886 ,she graduated first in her class from Perkins.

Following several months of reviewing the documentation of Samuel Gridley Howe's work with Laura Bridgman, Sullivan travelled to Tuscumbia, Alabama, in March 1887 to take on the role of governess for six-year-old Helen Keller. Helen had suffered a deafening illness at the age of 19 months, leaving her blind. With no other way to communicate with the outside world than touch, Keller had developed into an unruly, stubborn, and irritable child. Within a month, Sullivan was able to teach Keller that objects had names through the use of a manual alphabet through perseverance and inventiveness. After that, she advanced quickly. Because Keller demonstrated exceptional intelligence and possessed a comprehensive vocabulary, Keller and Sullivan became well-known across the country. The two started attending the Perkins Institution in 1888. After that, Sullivan went with Keller to the Wright-Humason School in New York City, the Cambridge School for Young Ladies, and eventually Radcliffe College. There, Sullivan read to Keller for hours every day and meticulously explained the lectures to her. Following Keller's graduation in 1904, they moved to Wrentham, Massachusetts, to live on a farm donated by a generous donor.

Sullivan wed John A. in 1905. Macy, the Harvard lecturer who collaborated with Keller on her memoirs. In the end, the marriage proved to be unhappy, and they got divorced in 1913. Keller kept Anne as his constant companion at home and on his chautauqua and vaudeville circuits, as well as on lecture tours throughout the United States and eventually the world for the American Foundation for the Blind. But Anne's habit of overdoing things wore her out, and her always -brittle spirits deteriorated along with her health. She was totally blind by 1935.

The Miracle Worker, a highly regarded 1962 film about their lives, starred Anne Bancroft as Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller. The movie took home the Duke and Bancroft Academy Awards for best supporting actress and best actress, respectively.

 

Ṭaha Hussein

Ṭaha Hussein was born on November. Maghaghah, Egypt, October 14, 1889—died October. 28, 1973, Cairo), he was a notable representative of the Egyptian modernist literary movement ,whose Arabic-language works include novels, stories, criticism, and social and political essays. His best-known work outside of Egypt is his autobiography, Al-Ayyam (3 vols. 1929–1967; The Days), the first contemporary Arab book.

taha hussien

to receive critical acclaim in the West.

Born into humble beginnings, Ṭaha Ḥusayn suffered a blinding disease at the age of two. He was sent to Cairo's prestigious Sunni al-Azhar seminary in 1902, where he soon fell out of favor with the school's largely conservative administration. He became the first student to graduate from the newly established secular University of Cairo in 1914, having enrolled there in 1908. His familiarity with Western culture was enhanced by his additional studies at the Sorbonne.

After returning from France, Ṭāhā Ḥusayn took up a position as a professor of Arabic literature at the University of Cairo in Egypt. However, his time there was marked by conflicts, as his bold ideas often angered conservative religious individuals. In his work "On Pre-Islamic Poetry" (1926), he applied modern critical methods and found himself caught in intense debates. He argued that a significant portion of the poetry believed to be from the pre-Islamic era had actually been fabricated by Muslims at a later time for various purposes, including the validation of Qurʾānic legends. As a result, he faced charges of apostasy, but he was eventually acquitted. In his book "The Future of Culture in Egypt" (1938), he expressed his belief that Egypt's cultural heritage links it to the broader Mediterranean civilization, encompassing Greece, Italy, and France. He advocated for the assimilation of modern European culture into Egypt.

Ṭaha Ḥusayn served as the minister of education from 1950 to 1952 in the final government led by the Wafd party before the monarchy was overthrown. During his time in this position, he greatly expanded the reach of state education and eliminated school fees. In his subsequent literary endeavors, he demonstrated a growing empathy for the impoverished and a keen interest in implementing effective governmental reforms. Additionally, he strongly advocated for the primacy of literary Arabic over colloquial Arabic.

Al-Ayyām's first section was published in 1929 (Eng. trans. A Childhood in Egypt) and the second in 1932 (Eng. trans. The Day-Stream). He released a memoir book, Mudhakkirāt (1967; Eng.), at the age of 78. trans. A Journey to France), regarded as Al-Ayyām's third book. All three of the parts were released as The Days, an English translation, in 1997.

- farah moukhtar