Genre: Non-fiction, Biography.

Tags: #anti-inspirationporn, #disabilityawareness, #nonfiction, #strongfemaleprotagonist, #diversevoices

Blurb:

"A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.

Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.

Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn't fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life.

Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story."

Quote:

"When I look back and evaluate the most limiting, painful parts of my life, or even more specifically, the hardest parts about being disabled, it's just not my legs. It's stigma, isolation, erasure, misunderstanding, skepticism, and ubiquitous inaccessibility... And that is the social model of understanding what it's like to live in an ableist world when you're disabled...

The undeniable fact is that we all  have bodies that make messes, fluctuate in size, cramp and bloat, rebel and disobey, break and heal, beak again and heal all wonky, hurt and age, speak to us, work for us, get tired, grieve and rejoice--but mainstream narratives tell us that our bodies aren't that complex."

RAE'S REVIEW:

This book was recommended to me by one of my reader/consultant friends who moves through the world with a visible physical disability, and as usual I'm so grateful for the heads-up. If you think of yourself as an able-bodied person and you want to show up in the world with intelligent compassion for people who experience disability, Rebekah Taussig will school you and probably shake you up a bit. That was definitely my experience.

A whip-smart, funny, wife and mom in the US, Rebekah moves through the world in leg braces and a wheelchair. Her story, of coming to terms with a body that doesn't fit the ideals we're handed as teen girls, is completely relatable. This book is like a 101 level class--a quick read that fills out the basic terms and issues, with lots of personal stories to illustrate the concepts. If you're writing about characters with a physical disability, you need to read this book, and then keep on reading and researching!

Available free on Libby/Overdrive? YES!

*A small taste of Rebekah shaking us up with her insights on kindness and disability in a TEDX talk*

https://youtu.be/7iys4NGj5As