A review by pushingdessy
Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body by Rebekah Taussig

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

 A memoir about disability that everyone should read.

 With admirable craft, the author takes us on a journey as she navigates life in a wheelchair. Through these chapters we see what it’s like growing up with scarce and often harmful disabled rep in the media, trying to fit in a society that doesn’t think you matter, feeling Othered even within intersectional feminism, living in an expensive body, dealing with people’s so-called kindness…

But we also hear about the joys of accepting yourself and feeling accepted as you are, finding love and support, finding your voice, and what it could be like if we accepted that all of our bodies are subject to change and included disabled voices to make our spaces more genuinely accessible for everyone.

Narratively, it was beautiful and engaging. Taussig has a friendly voice, but also a clever storytelling style that interweaves some of her anecdotes through different chapters.

But really, it was eye-opening to read about her perspective, her fears, her hopes, her frustrations, her vision. From the beginning she says: this is not a manual, don’t expect a handy list of how-to’s, this is not representative of all disabled folks. And yet, I think that if you go in and really listen, readers *can* come away with a better sense of how to think about disability, how to include disabled folks in our spaces, how we can advocate for change in whatever ways we can.

In that sense, apart from getting to read someone else’s deeply personal story, I thought that this little book was packed with valuable information, and an unmissable read for non-disabled folks. Even better: at the end, Taussig includes a list of recs of other media and activists on disability!