Rebekah Taussig

Teacher and advocate Rebekah Taussig recently published her first book Sitting Pretty The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body. Rebekah, who has a Ph.D in Disability Studies and Creative Nonfiction, has been working through the ideas that appear in her book on Instagram @sitting_pretty. She grew up as a paralyzed girl in the 1990s and 2000s and searched to find a story—any story—that reflected her own. She didn’t, and so she wrote it into existence. Sitting Pretty is a memoir in essays in which—among other things-- Rebekah grapples with the myth of ableism which she maintains revolves around the idea of an idealized typical body that isn’t typical at all but exists only for the very few and only for a short time since we all age (if we’re lucky).  In a conversational tone that makes it feel as though you’re talking with a very smart, funny and thoughtful friend, Rebekah makes the argument that “we all live in bodies with limitations and points of access. This is something that we all should be thinking about and not just in a dreadful way but in a way that allows us to imagine more for each other.”