The view from Rebekah Taussig’s wheelchair

Several of my parishioners have experienced life in a wheelchair. Whenever I think of one of them, Cindy, I remember seeing her at our annual bazaar, speeding in the breeze from one booth to another so quickly that her ponytail stuck almost straight out, a huge smile on her face. Contrast that with Rebekah Taussig’s description of a 2016 photoshoot in which Kylie Jenner posed using a wheelchair: “Jenner’s image depicts disability as purely passive, as if her wheelchair is her cage, when in real life, wheelchairs are empowering, liberating tools for so many people.” While many assume that a person in a wheelchair would rather live differently, Taussig says a dream of being separated from her wheelchair is her recurring nightmare.

Sitting Pretty is a memoir in essays, with each chapter focused on a theme such as romance, work, or feminism. Taussig, whose Instagram platform (@sitting_pretty) has more than 40,000 followers, has credentials beyond personal experience: she has a PhD in creative nonfiction and disability studies. But she never sounds like a preachy academic. I did find her copious parenthetical asides to the reader distracting at first. Eventually, though, her winsome conversational tone drew me in, and I saw her fascinating perspective flourish.

One chapter describes her experience teaching about disability to a group of high school seniors. She explains to them the difference between a medical model of disability, which focuses on the disability as a problem to be addressed, and a social model, which shifts the focus to the experience and context of disability and the settings that lead to disabling moments for the person with a disability. Her students resist illumination, which frustrates Taussig. But her account of her persistent attempts to enlighten them creates an enriching educational experience for the reader.