FINALIST FOR THE 2023 PULITZER PRIZE FOR MEMOIR
‘An exquisite exploration of disability, identity and the human capacity to do (and be) more than we’ve ever dreamed’ Time
‘Gorgeously, vividly alive’ New York Times
‘Challenges the unspoken social taboos about the disabled body, unpacking myths of beauty and our complicity in upholding those myths’ Lit Hub
Born with sacral agenesis, a visible congenital disability that affects her stature and gait, Chloé Cooper Jones had always found solace in what she thought of as ‘the neutral room’ – a dissociative space in her mind that offered her solace and self-protection, but also kept her isolated.
When she became pregnant (disproving her doctor, who had assumed it impossible), something necessary in her started to crack, forcing her to reckon with her defensive positionality to the world and the people in it. This prompted an odyssey across time and space as Chloé – while at museums, operas, concerts and sporting events, and in the presence of awe-inspiring nature – reconsidered the consciousness-shifting power of beauty.
A book of the year for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Time, BuzzFeed, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Vulture, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and New York Public Library
‘An exquisite exploration of disability, identity and the human capacity to do (and be) more than we’ve ever dreamed’ Time
‘Gorgeously, vividly alive’ New York Times
‘Challenges the unspoken social taboos about the disabled body, unpacking myths of beauty and our complicity in upholding those myths’ Lit Hub
Born with sacral agenesis, a visible congenital disability that affects her stature and gait, Chloé Cooper Jones had always found solace in what she thought of as ‘the neutral room’ – a dissociative space in her mind that offered her solace and self-protection, but also kept her isolated.
When she became pregnant (disproving her doctor, who had assumed it impossible), something necessary in her started to crack, forcing her to reckon with her defensive positionality to the world and the people in it. This prompted an odyssey across time and space as Chloé – while at museums, operas, concerts and sporting events, and in the presence of awe-inspiring nature – reconsidered the consciousness-shifting power of beauty.
A book of the year for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Time, BuzzFeed, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Vulture, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and New York Public Library
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Reviews
I recommend Easy Beauty to anyone who has wanted beauty badly, even without knowing quite what it is, but who could never seem to access it. At least, I'm that sort of anyone, and I could feel and recognize parts of myself in every moment of this book. Chloé Cooper Jones' writing pierces right through and lets a light in.
A masterpiece ... Cooper Jones uses the particulars of her own experience to formulate ideas that are at once universally applicable and genuinely profound
Easy Beauty is bold, honest, and superbly well-written. Chloé Cooper Jones is ruthless in probing our weakest and darkest areas, and does so with grace, humor, and ultimately, with something one seldom finds: kindness and humanity.
The multiple depths that Jones plumbs in Easy Beauty results in a memoir that can't easily be classified. The same can be said for the book's author. Jones is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a philosophy professor and a writer, who delves into her journey as a daughter, mother, wife and her search for a new way of seeing the world. In other words, her story is about the complexity of the human experience and the questions of identity and belonging that plague us all.
Moving, incisive... Jones resists sentimentality and is as unsparing of herself as she is of other people, and yet she writes with such graciousness. A wonderful debut
Genius... Shifted my understanding of a world I've only experienced while able-bodied
Gorgeous, vividly alive... In rejecting the dismissive gaze of others, Jones stands in the light of her own extremely able self
Gorgeous, concise and often very funny... a gripping memoir about parenting, disabilities and figuring out what to do next... a philosophical masterpiece, written in the tradition of those who see philosophy not as a dry academic subject but as a way of life
Exquisite. Here Pulitzer finalist Jones reflects on our standards of beauty from the perspective of a disabled woman whose rare congenital condition affects her stature and gait, and leaves her in constant pain. But it's ultimately motherhood that liberates her, and prompts her to re-examine the limitations she has accepted as givens.
Jones is a magnificent guide, fiercely sharp and fiercely human. This book is for anyone who wants to immerse into a world of beauty, who wants to get real about the roots of their desire, and who can't quite kick the habit of admiring the structures-and humans-who harm them. The questions she raises will resound in your head for a long time to come.
Perceptive, stylish, and darkly funny, Easy Beauty is an act of grace, and a reckoning. Chloé Cooper Jones is a remarkable writer - I would follow her mind anywhere.
Dazzling . . . Chloe Cooper Jones challenges society's rules of attraction with razor-sharp wit and intellect . . .[and) makes a brilliant case for the beauty of complexity
Graceful, soul-baring
Achingly felt, Jones's writing is a revelation
A memoir full of insight as the author tries to wrestle understanding and ownership of herself from a world still eager to assert its sovereignty over the female body.
What a gift of a book ... Easy Beauty has the rigor and precision of Joan Didion and Maggie Nelson and a forthright humor and naked truth all its own.
Jones challenges the unspoken social taboos about the disabled body, unpacking myths of beauty and our complicity in upholding those myths. Blending journalism, philosophy, and memoir, it's a book that everyone will be talking about.
Chloé Cooper Jones is a writer whose work I don't read, but enter: she weaves her brainy, crackling interior into the sinews of a reality that is forever reminding its participants of the difficulty of living inside a body. Easy Beauty is the most humane book I have read in a long time: in her insistence that we bear witness to each other, Jones calls forth a better, and indeed more beautiful world. I loved this book.
Inspired in part by the shift Jones saw in others' perceptions of her during her pregnancy, Easy Beauty challenges deep-seated assumptions about who gets to be capable, trustworthy, and desirable.
A soul-stretching, breathtaking existential memoir chronicles her reclaiming of body, mind, and self . . . Superlative writing, rendering complex emotion and unparalleled insight in skilfully precise language. Her debut is a game-changing gift to readers.
Touching and often humorous... explores life from the perspective of those who don't conform to conventional beauty standards
Despite doctors' dire predictions that she wouldn't live, walk or have children, she has done these things and more. Here, she probes the ways a culture determines a person's value and embarks on a journey to understand the myth of beauty and her own unintentional complicity in it.
This book is utterly remarkable. I was spellbound by the style, the ideas, the vulnerability, the talent.
Easy Beauty is an exquisite exploration of disability, identity, and the human capacity to do (and be) more than we've ever dreamed
Candid and truth-seeking, this memoir charts the act of refocusing and realigning the ways we view and interpret ourselves
In this ambitious and elegant book about seeing and being seen, Chloé Cooper Jones invokes thorny, theoretical material about identity, the social order, and how we measure human value, but her clarity and compassion invite all readers in. She has created a forceful and fresh point of view from which to anatomize power, access, and perception in her precise, unsparing prose. A necessary, relentlessly honest book that feels both of the moment and timeless.