Wynter K Miller: One of the theses underlying Easy Beauty is the belief that proximity to beauty can be transformative for the individual.

Throughout, it delivers the story of a woman interested in interrogating herself and, by extension, everyone and everything else.Ĭhloé Cooper Jones and I connected via Zoom to talk about beauty, transformation, and the art of being fully present-all timeless topics covered thoughtfully in Easy Beauty. The narrative follows Jones into bars and Beyoncé concerts, on international trips and neighborhood walks in Brooklyn. Jones’ story captures the experience of moving through the world in a body that others struggle to understand the perspective shifts that accompany parenthood the rules and limitations we accept from others and internalize for ourselves. Disability is one of the things it’s about-but realistically, it is about much more. Easy Beauty, too, is a memoir impervious to categorization. She was born with a rare congenital condition that causes acute physical pain and manifests visually as a disability-but Jones has not written, until recently, about either chronic pain or disability. Formally, she is trained as a philosopher-but her work as a freelance journalist covering everything from culture and film to travel and tennis earned her a Pulitzer Prize in 2020. 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.Jones is the kind of writer who defies boxes. 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.

‘Challenges the unspoken social taboos about the disabled body, unpacking myths of beauty and our complicity in upholding those myths’ Lit Hubīorn 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. ‘Gorgeously, vividly alive’ New York Times ‘An exquisite exploration of disability, identity and the human capacity to do (and be) more than we’ve ever dreamed’ Time FINALIST FOR THE 2023 PULITZER PRIZE FOR MEMOIR

Chloe cooper jones easy beauty review