Chloe Cooper Jones

Chloe Cooper Jones can trace the impetus for her new book to a single jarring conversation, said Sam Gillette in People. While working on her doctorate in philosophy and having drinks with two male friends, she was sympathizing with one who was confessing his struggles with depression until he blurted out that if he had to live in Cooper Jones’ body, he would have killed himself already. Cooper Jones was born with sacral agenesis, a rare congenital condition that left her short in stature, makes walking difficult, and regularly causes bursts of acute pain. She has heard many cruel comments, but recalling her colleague’s statement still stings even today, she says, because “it reminds me how isolated the disability experience can be—how even in these moments of possible connection, I’m still seen by certain people as something other, something slightly less human even.”

Cooper Jones’ new memoir, Easy Beauty, is her attempt to fully embrace a central part of her identity that she had previously worked to erase, said Amelia Schonbek in NYMag .com. The project began with speaking more openly about her disability—in this case, with the other friend who was at the bar that night. In the book, the effort expands into a consideration of pain, desire, and conceptions of beauty, until Cooper Jones can confidently claim to have finally arrived at a coherent sense of self that includes her disability and its effects. In a way, she was doing the work that any memoirist must, she says: “What you need to ask yourself is, Do I have an idea about what it means to be human that I really feel has to be communicated?”