At the beginning of her autobiography, Helen Keller speaks about the challenges and trepidations of writing about one’s personal history. She intersperses her family’s history, from her father’s ancestors from Switzerland to her family’s role in the growth of the South and Civil War, with her humble birth on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a small Alabama town.

Similarly, Keller intertwines her very early years of life as the first-born child in a Southern family with her early reliance on her sense of smell after losing her sight and hearing due to illness. In her early childhood, Keller claims to have been like other young children: “I came, I saw, I conquered, as the first baby in the family always does” (10). She shares the debate that ensued over her name with a humorous anecdote that she was named “Helen” only because, in all the excitement of the Christening, her father forgot what he had decided to call her in the first place.

Keller discusses how advanced a child she was for her age: speaking at around six months, and walking on her first birthday. But as she solemnly states, “These happy days did not last long” (11).