Book description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 * A Washington Post, Time,Publishers Weekly and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year * “Gorgeous, vividly alive.” —The New York Times * “Soul-stretching, breathtaking…A game-changing gift to readers.” —Booklist (starred review)
From Chloé Cooper Jones—Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Easy Beauty as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This book is a mind-blowing, paradigm-shifting biographical reflection that asks why we see beauty and disability the way we do.
Jones is herself a philosopher and is disabled. Through anecdotes of ways she has been treated (also by philosophers), stories of her own birth and her unexpected pregnancy, and accounts of her travels (including going to see a Beyoncé concert!), she upended my ideas about beauty and about being able-bodied.
She helps us ask why we think of ability the way we do and why expanding our openness to beauty could help build a more beautiful world. I finished it…
From Lydia's list on women who asked why.
The best way to learn how to write a memoir is to read a lot of memoirs. It expands your sense of the possibilities (“what? I’m allowed to do that?”), provides you with techniques to steal for your own work, helps you identify your distinctive strengths and weaknesses, and inspires you to keep going when self-doubt and weariness swoop in. I could recommend memoirs all day, but here’s a brand new one I’m reading right now that I love. It’s written by a philosophy professor with a skeletal disorder (like me!) and combines reflections on art, beauty, and disability…
From Helena's list on to read if you're thinking of writing a memoir.
If you love Easy Beauty...
These Blue Mountains
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
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