num_pages: 272
description: From Chlo Cooper JonesPulitzer Prize finalist philosophy professor Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipienta groundbreaking memoir about disability motherhood and a journey to far-flung places in search of a new way of seeing and being seen.I am in a bar in Brooklyn listening to two men my friends discuss whether my life is worth living. So begins Chlo Cooper Joness bold revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor pain calculations into every plan every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait her pain is physical. But there is also the pain of being judged and pitied for her appearance of being dismissed as less than. The way she has been seenor not seenhas informed her lens on the world her entire life. She resisted this reality by excelling academically and retreating to the neutral room in her mind until it passed. But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body) something in her shifts and Jones sets off on a journey across the globe reclaiming the spaces shed been denied and denied herself. From the bars and domestic spaces of her life in Brooklyn to sculpture gardens in Rome; from film festivals in Utah to a Beyonc concert in Milan; from a tennis tournament in California to the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh Jones weaves memory observation experience and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability and interrogates her own complicity in upholding those myths. With its emotional depth its prodigious spiky intelligence its passion and humor Easy Beauty is the rare memoir that has the power to make you see the world and your place in it with new eyes.
language: English
title: Easy Beauty
publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster