And it gives little sense of Sullivan's life prior to taking the job with the Kellers. But of course, The Miracle Worker gives no real sense of what became of the two women during the nearly fifty years that they continued to live and work together. And 'Teacher' was the nickname Keller always used for Sullivan, and one adopted by everyone in their circle for the rest of Sullivan's life. Gibson based his script on Sullivan's own accounts of her first weeks at the Keller home in 1887. This depiction is historically accurate, as far as it goes. Overcome with her own emotion at the miracle she has wrought, Annie identifies herself neither as Miss Sullivan nor Annie, but simply as Teacher. In the final, tear-jerking scene at the water pump, as the young Helen gropes around the stage demanding to know the words for all the objects she touches, she comes at last to Annie. Through her heroic efforts, often in opposition to Keller's parents, Annie finds fulfillment in the culturally approved alternative female role of surrogate mother and teacher. William Gibson's well-known stage and screen play, which Nielsen references in her title, depicts Sullivan as a feisty Irish-American who strives against all odds to tame the feral and rebellious deaf-blind six-year-old with the civilizing effects of language and love. But as for anyone who becomes interested in Keller's history, it is her teacher and long-time companion, Anne Sullivan, who becomes in many ways the more intriguing character.

The Radical Lives of Helen Keller (2004) discusses Keller's political activism, and Helen Keller: Selected Writings (2005) assembles letters and articles, many of which have never appeared in print before. Nielsen's previous two books do a great deal to illuminate facets of Keller's life that have been ignored or downplayed by other biographers. In the introduction to her new biography of Anne Sullivan, Beyond the Miracle Worker, Kim Nielsen admits that after publishing two books about Helen Keller, she intended never again to write anything else that remotely touched on Keller's life.

The miracle worker movie