LGBT Book, Film & Video Blog

For Kathi Wolfe, a local poet, freelance journalist and contributor to the Washington Blade, her recently published chapbook, “Helen Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems,” is the next step on what has been a life-long relationship with the famed deaf and blind activist. Wolfe, a lesbian who has been legally blind since birth, wrote the poems in the book after her initial impressions of Keller began to change.

“I’ve been thinking about Helen Keller for a long time,” Wolfe says, “Like many folks who are blind or visually impaired, I grew up under the shadow of Helen … I didn’t want anything to do with her since it was the era of ‘The Miracle Worker,’ and she was presented as having tantrums by the water pump. On the other hand, she lived to be 87 and was mentally alert until late in her life, so the other image of her is as a saintly old lady. I wanted people to see me as a regular person, not as a helpless, childlike animal or a saintly, heroic person who probably never had sex.” See Expanding her vision
Blind lesbian poet uses Helen Keller as inspiration for new chapbook