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

informative reflective

5.0

 “We don’t want to include disabled perspectives just because it’s nice or fair to the “handicapped” people. We want to weave these stories into the collection, we want to consider disabled folks as worthy of their own, ordinary storylines, because without them, we are less robust, less flexible, and less equipped for the ride we’re already on.” 
5☆|5 
 
I never read non-fiction books, but if they were all like this one, I would only read those for the next few months. This was everything I wanted—the absolute perfection of a memoir. I read Rebekah Taussig's memoir from the Instagram account @sitting_pretty for a book club organized by @the_reading_gang . This book was chosen for Disability Pride Month, and I believe that it was a great choice. 
 
This was both informative and also very funny. Taussig has an incredible way of writing and has managed to give us the feeling that we now have so much more information about disability and what is the experience of disabled people, and yet without feeling overwhelmed. If anything, we are left with the - correct - impression that we only have opened the 1st door and that there is still so much to learn. 
 
The author doesn’t have the pretension of being THE voice of the disabled community, nor to know everything, or to teach us everything. She said it herself in her book, but she is only a member of the community and has been handed a microphone, so she is going to use it. Still, her writing is part of what makes this book so pleasant to read. She has a way of taking us into her subjects that makes it even more interesting. Rebekah Taussig puts her personal life into it, and with her brilliant style gave us a new point of view on disability, pointing out biases that most of us never even thought about. 
 
I hope that the world is going to become more accessible systematically and systemically for all types of bodies, but I will certainly act in that direction. This is an essential read, and I cannot recommend or praise it enough. 
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