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laurenexploresbooks's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I found this work to be relatable and vulnerable filled with stories involving a wide range of topics including love, friendship, disability, family, depression, suicidal thoughts, popular media, and telling your story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts and Mental illness
Moderate: Ableism
bronwynbooklover's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
amk13's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
boggremlin's review
2.0
An interesting mix of essays. I'll be honest: the pop culture ones were Not For Me, but I really appreciated Brown's essay on jealousy (Love you, Mean it). Listened to the audio on 1.5x speed. Perhaps meant for a younger audience.
mariahistryingtoread's review
3.0
I liked The Pretty One well enough. It was recommended after I read Sitting Pretty and it seemed interesting so I went with it. Keah Brown went viral for her hashtag #DisabledAndCute. That was the beginning of her journey as a disability rights activist. I’m going to start with my main criticisms and then lead into chapter by chapter breakdowns about what I took from the book.
It was clear from the get go, that Brown does not have a ton of experience in writing. I believe she is a writer to some extent, but this seemed to be a case of biting off more than you can chew. That’s okay. Plenty of writers are weaker in their debuts. I don’t think she’s a bad writer, just new to the game and it shows.
The writing was simplistic and basic. It had a conversational tone I liked, but it was too informal. It lacked polish and refinement.
She starts the book off likening different types of chairs to that of a boyfriend. I thought this was a good analogy and way of transitioning into the more serious topic of accessibility initially. But, it goes on long past its effectiveness.
Later on she totally tanks the chapter on religion by holding onto this one long scenario she’s crafted to make a point. In it she presents herself in an alternate timeline where in the future you'd be expected to get rid of your disability and she's going through the process as dictated by scam artist evangelists - like using essential oils and 'holy' water and trying to pray the disability away - with unsuccessful results. The purpose is to be a funny way for her to express her critique of the evangelical Christian tactics that make disability into some horrible punishment for poor behavior and push the erroneous narrative that bad things don't happen to good people underscoring most evangelicalism.
She sticks to this scenario the entire chapter, coming back to it several times at will. I found it to be a tedious framing device. Outside of that it was not even always logically sound.
First off, I was not sure what she was trying to say at first because in the scenario the so-called cures fail, but they fail now so what was the point in it being set in the future or an alternate timeline? The only point that could be made is if the ‘cures’ worked and she was showing how the world would champion such a harmful narrative as progress.
In the middle of the scenario she includes seeing a hypnotist which involves way too much detail: she names her Jackie and comes up with a whole story about her becoming her friend when she isn't supposed to, and Jackie introducing her past selves and her past selves are all disabled and her favorite is one named Annabelle and seriously what did any of that have to do with anything?
It only showed how useless the whole thing was. She never mentioned hypnosis as something to be critical of before or after presuming she was bringing up a hypnotist to critique it in the first place. Hypnotism falls under spirituality which has its flaws but she doesn't talk about that in this chapter. She is focusing on religion not spirituality and she doesn’t make use of hypnotherapy so why bring it up? Then the scenario transitions to her saying her alternate self tries surgery and it doesn't work and she makes a joke about being in court proceedings for it currently.
It’s just one big messy story that has exhausts its narrative function. I personally didn’t find it all that charming even from the beginning, but I could at least see its merits. In trying to be amusing Brown loses sight of it actually making sense.
Chapter 1: The entire chapter was about the chairs thing. I feel there was a much better way to streamline and focus her point about the significance of chairs in not only her life but a lot of peoples’ lives whom the reader probably has not considered before. We should not assume laziness immediately upon watching people use services that are there for that exact reason.
Chapter 2: I appreciate her admitting her own faults in regards to her relationship to her brother Eric. I identity heavily with her inability to reach out and let things go because I struggle a lot with letting people reach me emotionally once they've 'crossed' me ie I've already slotted them into a box in relation to me and I rarely let that change or evolve.
The core of the chapter is that Keah was super jealous of her twin sister and sabotaged their relationship growing up by directing her self hate at Leah because in her mind it was unfair that Leah was not using her able body to its fullest capabilities per Keah’s definition or that Leah could make choices in certain regards where Keah had to settle by default. After college Keah has taken pains to repair this relationship and it has worked somewhat but Keah acknowledges that it not what she wanted it to be and that it may never be because of the pain she inflicted when the two were young and she's had to make her peace with how she ruined it.
Chapter 3: Identity is different for everybody. For example there are terms you may want to use or reclaim that others want absolutely no part of. Keah does not want to reclaim the word cripple because of personal trauma, but she gives those who desire reclaiming it her blessing. It's about knowing who you are as a disabled person for your own mental health’s sake and so you can better fight for others who are more disenfranchised when you can. She also discusses privilege and how being lucky enough to have support systems has shaped who she is as a person because it's given her access to opportunities that has led her to have the platform she has today.
Chapter 4: A close examination of where some of her self hate stemmed from. Having Black representation in media (Brandy Cinderella, Whitney Houston Fairy Godmother, 90s remake of Annie with Audra McDonald as Grace) gave her something to look up to. On the other side of the coin she unconsciously internalized more self hate for being disabled because on some level she operated as if she'd somehow wake up one day and be 'normal' (as she describes it) to live out those experiences like the Black characters she saw. As she got older she started to recognize that Black representation is not enough. It's only part of her identity and as such she deserves and desires to see the entirety of her life mirrored on screen not just a piece of it.
Disabled people have very very limited options for representation and Black disabled people have less than that. When a disabled character does appear they're 99% of the time going to be played by a nondisabled actor and the industry always wants praise for trying when they've barely done anything for years.
Chapter 5: Curative messages are harmful. They don't reflect on God in a good way and they're about the other persons' ego more than anything because it's rooted in the idea that you cannot possibly be happy being disabled and that all disabled people actively want to be nondisabled when really that's a complicated topic that differs for every disabled person since they aren’t a monolith.
Chapter 6: Brown discusses how significant small, by non-disabled peoples' standards, actions can be for disabled people because their expectations are different based on their individual needs or desires and it's easy to get trapped feeling useless because you can't do some things, but to assume otherwise is ableist and infantilizing. It doesn't treat disabled people as individual people who you need to approach as you would any other person, it's putting yourself on guard to humor them as if they're children at all times because you are viewing them as a monolith who can't take care of themselves. She demonstrates her point through her story about her years-long efforts to learn a way to put her hair up in a ponytail without outside assistance.
Working towards your goals however meaningless they seem to others because they're meaningful to you is important. And simply trying is a success in its own right.
Chapter 7: Disabled people are largely not viewed as attractive so everyone feels comfortable not putting them at the forefront of any marketing campaigns. The underlying idea is that disabled people will put people off because nondisabled people unconsciously or not gravitate away from disabled people. Even if they are included it's usually a white wheelchair user. What’s worse, when disabled people ask for more they're shut down because people don't take it seriously or get defensive about something they like possibly being problematic or refuse to entertain the idea that a simple mistake could have been made.
The previous chapter was like the first part to this one because they're both about ascribing to conventional beauty standards. Chapter 6 is about hair and makeup. This chapter talks about fashion and body image as a result of clothes not being made for the disabled body. I’d argue both chapters could easily been folded into chapter 4 which is the representation one.
Chapter 8: Brown uses rom-coms to discuss the type of love she wants and how she has never had that before. Since discovering how to love herself it's actually harder in some ways because she used to blame her cerebral palsy for not finding love and now she can't do that because she no longer uses her cerebral palsy as justification which means the barriers are now things intrinsic to her like her personality or hobbies. It’s now her fault vs a failing on theirs. She knows she doesn't need love but that doesn't stop her from the very human, normal desire for it. The lack of romantic love also feeds into her fears that she's not good enough because why is it that not ONE person has ever been interested? The chapter is focused a lot on her personally more than talking about disability in general.
Chapter 9: Music was crucial to her working through the worst of her depression. It’s generally just the usual cliches about the transformative power of music.
Chapter 10: Brown used to cry a lot, but as she aged she learned that crying was a sign of weakness and stopped. Then she had to unpack the idea that showing emotion or being vulnerable was wrong in order to learn how to cry when she felt like it rather than creating 'justifiable' reasons (such as self harming) to do so. Now she urges everyone to cry when they can or feel like it because crying is just another way of expressing yourself like laughter or smiling. Why is sadness so taboo?
Chapter 11: This chapter is on the significance of friendship and it devolves into her just listing each of her friends and gassing them up. It started strong with her taking accountability for sabotaging a close friendship because of her toxic behavior but then it becomes her explaining relationships I had no context for or reason to remember because there are so many and they were overall irrelevant.
Suddenly it transitions into grief and how the loss of two key family members changed her. This shift solidified my feeling that the last few chapters are being fluffed up because there's not a lot to fill any of these chapters. Using this chapter as an example, it expands into grief to add length but valuing your relationships overall instead of just friendships is a rehash of chapter 6 so all of this information did not belong here. The difference here is semantic so why even divide it out in this manner.
Chapter 12: More on her self hate this time through the lens of her suicidal ideation and a revisit to her depression. She talks about how books namely Sarah Dessen's helped save her life. This final chapter, the music chapter, chapter 9 on friendship and grief could have been one long chapter about mental health since it centered mostly around the same 2 to 3 year pocket of time in her life anyways.
Keah Brown is a decent storyteller. I feel this could have used some better editing to refine it, but there’s a solid foundation here. I didn’t find it as insightful as Sitting Pretty though in it’s own way it had a lot of strong messages to impart. I hope that it brings comfort to other disabled people as Brown intended. I look forward to seeing where her next venture takes her.
It was clear from the get go, that Brown does not have a ton of experience in writing. I believe she is a writer to some extent, but this seemed to be a case of biting off more than you can chew. That’s okay. Plenty of writers are weaker in their debuts. I don’t think she’s a bad writer, just new to the game and it shows.
The writing was simplistic and basic. It had a conversational tone I liked, but it was too informal. It lacked polish and refinement.
She starts the book off likening different types of chairs to that of a boyfriend. I thought this was a good analogy and way of transitioning into the more serious topic of accessibility initially. But, it goes on long past its effectiveness.
Later on she totally tanks the chapter on religion by holding onto this one long scenario she’s crafted to make a point. In it she presents herself in an alternate timeline where in the future you'd be expected to get rid of your disability and she's going through the process as dictated by scam artist evangelists - like using essential oils and 'holy' water and trying to pray the disability away - with unsuccessful results. The purpose is to be a funny way for her to express her critique of the evangelical Christian tactics that make disability into some horrible punishment for poor behavior and push the erroneous narrative that bad things don't happen to good people underscoring most evangelicalism.
She sticks to this scenario the entire chapter, coming back to it several times at will. I found it to be a tedious framing device. Outside of that it was not even always logically sound.
First off, I was not sure what she was trying to say at first because in the scenario the so-called cures fail, but they fail now so what was the point in it being set in the future or an alternate timeline? The only point that could be made is if the ‘cures’ worked and she was showing how the world would champion such a harmful narrative as progress.
In the middle of the scenario she includes seeing a hypnotist which involves way too much detail: she names her Jackie and comes up with a whole story about her becoming her friend when she isn't supposed to, and Jackie introducing her past selves and her past selves are all disabled and her favorite is one named Annabelle and seriously what did any of that have to do with anything?
It only showed how useless the whole thing was. She never mentioned hypnosis as something to be critical of before or after presuming she was bringing up a hypnotist to critique it in the first place. Hypnotism falls under spirituality which has its flaws but she doesn't talk about that in this chapter. She is focusing on religion not spirituality and she doesn’t make use of hypnotherapy so why bring it up? Then the scenario transitions to her saying her alternate self tries surgery and it doesn't work and she makes a joke about being in court proceedings for it currently.
It’s just one big messy story that has exhausts its narrative function. I personally didn’t find it all that charming even from the beginning, but I could at least see its merits. In trying to be amusing Brown loses sight of it actually making sense.
Chapter 1: The entire chapter was about the chairs thing. I feel there was a much better way to streamline and focus her point about the significance of chairs in not only her life but a lot of peoples’ lives whom the reader probably has not considered before. We should not assume laziness immediately upon watching people use services that are there for that exact reason.
Chapter 2: I appreciate her admitting her own faults in regards to her relationship to her brother Eric. I identity heavily with her inability to reach out and let things go because I struggle a lot with letting people reach me emotionally once they've 'crossed' me ie I've already slotted them into a box in relation to me and I rarely let that change or evolve.
The core of the chapter is that Keah was super jealous of her twin sister and sabotaged their relationship growing up by directing her self hate at Leah because in her mind it was unfair that Leah was not using her able body to its fullest capabilities per Keah’s definition or that Leah could make choices in certain regards where Keah had to settle by default. After college Keah has taken pains to repair this relationship and it has worked somewhat but Keah acknowledges that it not what she wanted it to be and that it may never be because of the pain she inflicted when the two were young and she's had to make her peace with how she ruined it.
Chapter 3: Identity is different for everybody. For example there are terms you may want to use or reclaim that others want absolutely no part of. Keah does not want to reclaim the word cripple because of personal trauma, but she gives those who desire reclaiming it her blessing. It's about knowing who you are as a disabled person for your own mental health’s sake and so you can better fight for others who are more disenfranchised when you can. She also discusses privilege and how being lucky enough to have support systems has shaped who she is as a person because it's given her access to opportunities that has led her to have the platform she has today.
Chapter 4: A close examination of where some of her self hate stemmed from. Having Black representation in media (Brandy Cinderella, Whitney Houston Fairy Godmother, 90s remake of Annie with Audra McDonald as Grace) gave her something to look up to. On the other side of the coin she unconsciously internalized more self hate for being disabled because on some level she operated as if she'd somehow wake up one day and be 'normal' (as she describes it) to live out those experiences like the Black characters she saw. As she got older she started to recognize that Black representation is not enough. It's only part of her identity and as such she deserves and desires to see the entirety of her life mirrored on screen not just a piece of it.
Disabled people have very very limited options for representation and Black disabled people have less than that. When a disabled character does appear they're 99% of the time going to be played by a nondisabled actor and the industry always wants praise for trying when they've barely done anything for years.
Chapter 5: Curative messages are harmful. They don't reflect on God in a good way and they're about the other persons' ego more than anything because it's rooted in the idea that you cannot possibly be happy being disabled and that all disabled people actively want to be nondisabled when really that's a complicated topic that differs for every disabled person since they aren’t a monolith.
Chapter 6: Brown discusses how significant small, by non-disabled peoples' standards, actions can be for disabled people because their expectations are different based on their individual needs or desires and it's easy to get trapped feeling useless because you can't do some things, but to assume otherwise is ableist and infantilizing. It doesn't treat disabled people as individual people who you need to approach as you would any other person, it's putting yourself on guard to humor them as if they're children at all times because you are viewing them as a monolith who can't take care of themselves. She demonstrates her point through her story about her years-long efforts to learn a way to put her hair up in a ponytail without outside assistance.
Working towards your goals however meaningless they seem to others because they're meaningful to you is important. And simply trying is a success in its own right.
Chapter 7: Disabled people are largely not viewed as attractive so everyone feels comfortable not putting them at the forefront of any marketing campaigns. The underlying idea is that disabled people will put people off because nondisabled people unconsciously or not gravitate away from disabled people. Even if they are included it's usually a white wheelchair user. What’s worse, when disabled people ask for more they're shut down because people don't take it seriously or get defensive about something they like possibly being problematic or refuse to entertain the idea that a simple mistake could have been made.
The previous chapter was like the first part to this one because they're both about ascribing to conventional beauty standards. Chapter 6 is about hair and makeup. This chapter talks about fashion and body image as a result of clothes not being made for the disabled body. I’d argue both chapters could easily been folded into chapter 4 which is the representation one.
Chapter 8: Brown uses rom-coms to discuss the type of love she wants and how she has never had that before. Since discovering how to love herself it's actually harder in some ways because she used to blame her cerebral palsy for not finding love and now she can't do that because she no longer uses her cerebral palsy as justification which means the barriers are now things intrinsic to her like her personality or hobbies. It’s now her fault vs a failing on theirs. She knows she doesn't need love but that doesn't stop her from the very human, normal desire for it. The lack of romantic love also feeds into her fears that she's not good enough because why is it that not ONE person has ever been interested? The chapter is focused a lot on her personally more than talking about disability in general.
Chapter 9: Music was crucial to her working through the worst of her depression. It’s generally just the usual cliches about the transformative power of music.
Chapter 10: Brown used to cry a lot, but as she aged she learned that crying was a sign of weakness and stopped. Then she had to unpack the idea that showing emotion or being vulnerable was wrong in order to learn how to cry when she felt like it rather than creating 'justifiable' reasons (such as self harming) to do so. Now she urges everyone to cry when they can or feel like it because crying is just another way of expressing yourself like laughter or smiling. Why is sadness so taboo?
Chapter 11: This chapter is on the significance of friendship and it devolves into her just listing each of her friends and gassing them up. It started strong with her taking accountability for sabotaging a close friendship because of her toxic behavior but then it becomes her explaining relationships I had no context for or reason to remember because there are so many and they were overall irrelevant.
Suddenly it transitions into grief and how the loss of two key family members changed her. This shift solidified my feeling that the last few chapters are being fluffed up because there's not a lot to fill any of these chapters. Using this chapter as an example, it expands into grief to add length but valuing your relationships overall instead of just friendships is a rehash of chapter 6 so all of this information did not belong here. The difference here is semantic so why even divide it out in this manner.
Chapter 12: More on her self hate this time through the lens of her suicidal ideation and a revisit to her depression. She talks about how books namely Sarah Dessen's helped save her life. This final chapter, the music chapter, chapter 9 on friendship and grief could have been one long chapter about mental health since it centered mostly around the same 2 to 3 year pocket of time in her life anyways.
Keah Brown is a decent storyteller. I feel this could have used some better editing to refine it, but there’s a solid foundation here. I didn’t find it as insightful as Sitting Pretty though in it’s own way it had a lot of strong messages to impart. I hope that it brings comfort to other disabled people as Brown intended. I look forward to seeing where her next venture takes her.
jecinwv's review
4.0
I'm reviewing this book for Disability Book Week. I chose to read this book for fun and felt it would fit with the needs for Disability Book Week. The Pretty One is a memoir by a Black woman with cerebral palsy. This memoir includes a collection of essays on disability, pop culture, and music. This would be a great book for both young adults and adults. Keah Brown has some amazing essays in here. My favorite is the first one that is about seats and the various kinds of seats that those of us who have disabilities that exhaust us run into. I loved that she named the seats. I also felt myself bonding with Keah over favorite musicians like Demi Lovato and Paramore. This book explores the fact that those of us with disabilities can be pretty, desirable, loved, and more than just our disabilities.