Beauty, disability mulled in thoughtful memoir

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This article was published 16/04/2022 (1629 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An exploration of beauty through the eyes of author Chloé Cooper Jones is a journey through disability and desire, right down to the sparkling, self-reflective depths of humanity.

As a philosophy professor and Pulitzer-nominated freelance feature writer, Jones melds philosophical uncertainty with visceral reality. Her memoir is all at once a travelogue, a love story, a primer on the study of esthetics and a distinctive chronicle of unexpected motherhood.

It’s a vulnerable account of tiptoeing between survival and self-sabotage in search of something beautiful. (Plus, it sneaks in cultural commentary on the respective healing powers of Beyoncé and Roger Federer.)

Living in Brooklyn with her husband and six-year-old son, Jones can’t find motivation to finish her second PhD. She takes readers with her to Italy, seeing Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculptures in Rome, drinking wine alongside outdoor opera-goers at the Baths of Carcalla, sweating in the VIP section of a stadium in Milan.

She chides herself for clinging to the idea she can only attempt “an embarrassing impersonation” of white, male, able-bodied travel writers she admires. But she offers up no imitation: this is her voice.

Jones covers the Sundance Film Festival in Utah and crashes a private party for the actor Peter Dinklage. She bonds with a tuk-tuk driver in Cambodia, and then sets off again to marvel at Federer’s talent in a tennis tournament near Palm Springs, Calif.

Before these travels, Jones never wanted to write about disability — even though, by her account, it is the lens through which the world sees her.

She was born with sacral agenesis, a rare birth defect involving abnormal development of the spine. The condition causes her near-constant physical pain. It affects the size and shape of her body and the way she walks. People had to “unsee” her body, she believed, before they could get to know her.

In the book, Jones recalls a friend asking why she’d never written about it. Her immediate response: “I’m tired.”

The memoir itself is a much more thoughtful, no less honest, answer.

Sectioned into two parts (pre- and post-Beyoncé concert, incidentally), Easy Beauty is entirely infused with Jones’s experience of disability.

She describes what it feels like to live a life some see as less than human, sidelined by others to the point she excludes herself. She readily reveals her flaws and her tendency toward self-righteousness. Handling this emotional depth is where the memoir excels.

People’s dismissal and discomfort, Jones writes, gave her freedom to remain an outsider.

“I was free to feel superior to people who would exclude me. It is hard to leave the darkness and step out into bright and baring light.”

Leaning into literary journalism and away from overwrought academic language, Jones unfolds complex ideas — smoothing them out and then pointing out all the wrinkles, inviting readers to see the light and the darkness in her story. She writes with a rhythm that pleasantly hums along, yet leaves powerful reverberations.

The narrative sags when Jones entertains drawn-out conversations with often-unnamed strangers and acquaintances, but the reader can trust each of these dialogues will unlock different perspectives that ultimately get her where she needs to go.

The memoir’s most moving moments explore Jones’ relationship with her son, Wolfgang. She sees how her worldviews, earned but fallible, are shaping him. In him, she sees bits of herself: the fear, the intelligence, and the beauty.

After walking to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean with Wolfgang, she writes: “We’d been given only a real life, dreadfully normal and sublime, and I would no longer betray its beauty by wishing it otherwise.”

Katie May is a Free Press reporter who fared poorly in philosophy classes.