Easy Beauty
Written by Chloé Cooper Jones
Narrated by Chloé Cooper Jones
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 * Vulture’s #1 Memoir of 2022 * A Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA TODAY, Time, BuzzFeed, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year * One of Oprah Daily’s 33 Memoirs That Changed a Generation
From Chloé Cooper Jones—Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy professor, Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient—an “exquisite” (Oprah Daily) and groundbreaking memoir about disability, motherhood, and the search for a new way of seeing and being seen.
“I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.”
So begins Chloé Cooper Jones’s bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor “pain calculations” into every plan, every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, her pain is physical. But there is also the pain of being judged and pitied for her appearance, of being dismissed as “less than.” The way she has been seen—or not seen—has informed her lens on the world her entire life. She resisted this reality by excelling academically and retreating to “the neutral room in her mind” until it passed. But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), something in her shifts, and Jones sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she’d been denied, and denied herself.
From the bars and domestic spaces of her life in Brooklyn to sculpture gardens in Rome; from film festivals in Utah to a Beyoncé concert in Milan; from a tennis tournament in California to the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, Jones weaves memory, observation, experience, and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability and interrogates her own complicity in upholding those myths.
“Bold, honest, and superbly well-written” (Andre Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name) Easy Beauty is the rare memoir that has the power to make you see the world, and your place in it, with new eyes.
Chloé Cooper Jones
Chloé Cooper Jones is a philosophy professor, journalist, and the author of the memoir Easy Beauty, which was named a Best Book of 2022 by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Time, and others. She is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient and, in 2020, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Related to Easy Beauty
Related audiobooks
Ripe: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crushing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is Not A Pity Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Judgment: Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWorry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grief Is for People Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The World According to Joan Didion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReproduction: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dear Dolly: Collected Wisdom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5EVERYTHING/NOTHING/SOMEONE: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Penance: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5BFF: A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sociopath: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Greta & Valdin: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Mess Is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Last Innocent Year: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlphabetical Diaries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Omega Farm: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Death Valley: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To Be Honest Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Personal Memoirs For You
Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night: New translation by Marion Wiesel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Woman in Me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sociopath: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: My Year of Psychedelics: Lessons on Better Living Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Counting the Cost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: Built for This: The Quiet Strength of Powerlifting Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shelter: A Love Letter to Trees Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dad on Pills: Fatherhood and Mental Illness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5See You on the Way Down: Catch You on the Way Back Up! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bad Mormon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Lucy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Yes Please Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making It So: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Summer of Fall: Gravity is a bitch, but I'm still standing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Easy Beauty
2 ratings0 reviews