A review by carrienation76
The Pretty One: On Life, Pop Culture, Disability, and Other Reasons to Fall in Love with Me by Keah Brown
3.0
The subject matters covered in this book are powerful. Brown speaks to the intersection of race, gender, and disability while maintaining a lens for LGBTQIA, gender nonbinary folks, body size, etc. Working towards self-acceptance - and being frank about the struggle to get there - is the centerpiece of this book. Top themes include pop cultural representation and dissecting its implications as well as moments of triumph in navigating life with disabilities. Brown exhibits real care in highlighting both visible and invisible disabilities.
Still, I echo other comments here - the writing is repetitive. This manifests both in recurring themes where the same content is rehashed between essays, and also in sentence structure. It feels like the essays were written in isolation of each other, and little attention was paid to making this a cohesive collection.
This book is worth sticking with to the end. The writing does get better in the latter essays. The ground covered in the final two essays are particularly powerful as they touch on the hard truths of hitting rock bottom in the path to self-acceptance.
Still, I echo other comments here - the writing is repetitive. This manifests both in recurring themes where the same content is rehashed between essays, and also in sentence structure. It feels like the essays were written in isolation of each other, and little attention was paid to making this a cohesive collection.
This book is worth sticking with to the end. The writing does get better in the latter essays. The ground covered in the final two essays are particularly powerful as they touch on the hard truths of hitting rock bottom in the path to self-acceptance.