By Rebekah Taussig
Overview
Born in Manhattan, Kansas, in the mid-1980s, Rebekah Taussig was 14 months old when she was diagnosed with a malignant cancer that attacked her spine. Two years of intense treatment left her cancer-free but paralyzed from the waist down. As a young girl, she searched for nuanced depictions of disability: stories that captured all the ways disability could be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. As an adult, she created her own. Taussig’s Sitting Pretty is a “memoir-in-essays” spanning personal stories and family histories, offering “a fierce and fabulous revision to entrenched ableist scripts” (Kirkus Reviews) through “spunky, self-aware wit, combined with education that never feels didactic” (speaker and disability rights activist Emily Ladau). “Taussig’s explorations of the ways her own ordinary, resilient, disabled body interacts with a largely able-bodied world are complex, evading neatly tied conclusions and categories” (Rumpus). “Part wake-up call, part call-to-action, this [book] will resonate with anyone who lives in a body, disabled and nondisabled alike” (LitHub).
