Easy Beauty: A Memoir by Chloe Cooper Jones

Soul-stretching, breathtaking A game-changing gift to readers. -Booklist (starred review) From Chloe Cooper Jones-Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy professor, Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient-a 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 Chloe Cooper Jones's 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 seen-or not seen-has 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 she'd been denied, and denied herself.