The Disability Book Archive

[ID: A book cover. The background is orange. Centre right of the cover, a photograph of a woman in a wheelchair. She has short blonde hair, a yellow t-shirt which appears to have been drawn on, black shorts, and black flat shoes. She is smiling. The word “Sitting” is above her head in large white capitals. The word “Pretty” is at her feet in large white capitals. The subtitle “The View from My Ordinary Resilient Body” is written to the left of her, in between the title, in smaller, black, caps. The author’s name “Rebekah Taussig” is at the bottom of the cover in black caps. /end]

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Content Warning:

• Ableism
• Body Shaming
• Medical Content
• Cancer
• Sexual Harassment
• Medical Trauma

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Summary:

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.

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Notes:

There is an audiobook, and an ebook.

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Archivist Comments:

The whole reason I wanted to make this archive in the first place was to showcase more disabled representation in literature, outside of the popular stereotypes that dominate the media. I haven’t read this book- I want to- but from the things I’ve read about it, I don’t think there’s one that fits better to that idea to be honest.

This is Taussig’s memoir written through essays, detailing her experiences. It is very highly reviewed, with a lot of reviews declaring it a “must read”.

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